This is not some Internet hoax. Nor is it the domain of a dubious fortune teller. It's the homepage of a Chicago area startup called SmartSignal Corp. The privately held company says it has developed software that can predict when machines - everything from airplane engines to power plant turbines - will break down, so they can be fixed before they fail.

The fault-detection software was created a decade ago by researchers at Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Ill., to monitor nuclear facilities. SmartSignal has spent years refining and testing the software with the goal of expanding beyond heavy machinery into automobiles, home appliances and medical equipment.

'There will come a day when your refrigerator or car...has a sense of self awareness and tells you a problem is developing so you can take care of it,' says Gary Conkright, SmartSignal's chairman and chief executive. 'It may sound like science fiction but it's not that far off.'

There's plenty of science, but not much fiction behind the Lisle, Ill., company, whose 40-person staff includes the team of Argonne scientists that created the mathematical equations and analytical process at the core of the software.

SmartSignal's software culls data collected from existing sensors to find signs of impending equipment failure. It can identify problems hours or days before they would trigger typical sensor alarms. It also noti-fies technicians of the expected failure date and time.

It works by comparing real-time sensor readings to a model of how the machine should be operating. The models are created using performance data from each machine and updated regularly. The software looks for subtle changes in the 'noise' between the model and actual readings, and then distinguishes between normal variations and incipient faults.

'We look at (a piece of equipment) in a holistic way rather than sensor by sensor,' Conkright says. 'There-fore, we see things much earlier than other approaches with a much greater degree of confidence.'

The startup has faced considerable skepticism from the engineers and technicians at large companies, which often have homegrown fault-detection systems. But it has signed up 15 customers by proving that its software works in pilot projects. After a 12 months of testing, Delta Air Lines Inc. (DAL) decided earlier this year to use the software to monitor its fleet of jet engines. 'So far, 100% of the time that SmartSignal has altered us to a potential problem that problem has come true,' says Walter Taylor, director of process and technology engineering at Delta in Atlanta.

Another customer is a division of General Motors Corp. (GM) that builds diesel locomotives. GM Electro-Motive has been testing SmartSignal for two years and uses it on 100 freight and passenger trains. It has found some problems more than a week before they occurred. 'We're convinced we have saved locomo-tives from road failure several times,' says Curt Swenson, director of marketing at the GM unit in LaGrange, Ill.

From Power Plants To Pacemakers

Although SmartSignal has focused on industrial uses of its software, the company is starting to explore other markets, such as healthcare. Executives say the software could be adapted to predict problems with medical devices, like pacemakers and home dialysis kits, that are retrofitted to wirelessly transmit data.

"It's a technique that's completely generic...It could work on anything from jet engines to a toaster oven to your watch," says Alan Thomas, director of technology commercialization at the University of Chicago, which runs Argonne and bankrolled SmartSignal's early years.

Stephan Wegerich, a senior scientist at SmartSignal and a former Argonne researcher, says the software could even predict when hospital patients in intensive care wards will crash by tracking data such as pulse rates, blood pressure and oxygen levels.

"When you're looking at someone in the ICU, they are already bad. You are looking to see if they are getting worse," Wegerich says. "You collect your initial data, just like a jet engine monitor, and look for devi-ations from the initial dynamics."

SmartSignal is also conducting trials with Questra Corp., a Redwood City, Calif., firm that makes software to collect data over the Internet from machines in diagnostic laboratories and hospitals.

The software not only predicts when lab equipment, like a robotic arm, will fail, but it can also measure the accuracy of test results, says Vesna Swartz, Questra's vice president of marketing. It can analyze a batch of test scores in real time to determine if there was "a problem with the way the test was run," Swartz says.

Fault-detection software is making inroads with manufacturers of heavy equipment and operators of large fleets of machines, but it will be some time before the technology finds its way into medical devices and consumer products, says Marc McCluskey, an analyst with AMR Research in Boston. SmartSignal's software is best at analyzing rotating machines, like jet engines and gas turbines, McCluskey says. "Once you get into medical devices and toasters, there are different nuances...as to how they operate, where they fail, why they fail," he adds.

A Needle In The Haystack

The technology has already come a long way. It was born in the early 1990s when the U.S. Department of Energy asked researchers to develop a better tool for predicting problems at nuclear facilities after the failure of a coolant pump forced an emergency reactor shutdown at Idaho Falls, Idaho. The Energy Department held a contest. It buried 10 faults in 18-months worth of data, recorded at one minute intervals, from a Volkswagon-sized coolant pump and asked researchers to find the problems.

"It was like finding a needle in the haystack," says Wegerich. The Argonne team crunched gigabytes of data and not only found the 10 hidden faults, but their software uncovered problems that were previously unknown.

The researchers later realized they had stumbled upon a technique that could be used on other pieces of equipment. The University of Chicago, which secured patents on the early Argonne work, and Alan Wilks, a former AlliedSignal Corp. researcher, created SmartSignal to improve and commercialize the software. Investors were unwilling to fund the startup and it went through several management teams until Conkright, an engineer turned businessman, joined in 1998. It has since raised more than $23 million from venture capitalists, expanded its patent portfolio and begun to win over the skeptics.

-By Marcelo Prince, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-5244; marcelo.prince@dowjones.com