A system is suitable for carrying out a method for the automated processing of fault hypotheses in a course of a fault cause analysis in the case of a fault event in a technical installation. A data processing system uses knowledge-based models for fault cause analysis and physical models of installation functions and processes that can be carried out by the technical installation. The system has a first unit for calculating and storing installation and process states. The first unit has access to the physical models and to data that is stored in a data server for the technical installation. The system has a second unit for hypothesis processing and an input/output device.