Control chart patterns recognition using run rules and fuzzy classifiers considering limited data

Statistical process control chart is a common tool used for monitoring and detecting process variations. The process data streams, when graphically plotted on control chart reveal useful patterns. These patterns can be associated with possible assignable causes if properly recognized. These patterns detections are useful for process diagnostic. Different types of control chart pattern recognition methods are reported in literature. Most of the existing data-driven methods require a large amount for training data before putting into practice. Short production run and short product life cycle processes are usually constrained with limited data availability. Thus there is a need to investigate and develop an effective control chart pattern recogniser (CCPR) methods for process monitoring with limited data. Two methods were investigated in this study to recognize fully developed control chart patterns for process with limited data on X-bar chart. The first method was combination of selected run rules, as run rules do not require training data. Classifiers based on fuzzy set theory were the second method. The performance of these methods was evaluated based on percent correct recognition. The methods proposed in this study significantly reduced the requirements of training data. Different combination of Nelson’s run rules; R2,R5,R6 for shift and trend, R3,R5,R6 for cyclic, R4,R5,R8 for systematic and R7 for stratification patterns were found effective for recognizing. Differentiating between the shift and trend patterns remains challenging task for the run rules. Heuristic based Mamdani fuzzy classifier with fuzzy set simplification operations using statistical features gave more than ninety percent correct patterns recognition results. Adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) fuzzy classifier with fuzzy c-mean using statistical features gave more prominent results. The findings suggest that the proposed methods can be used in short production run and the process with limited data. The fuzzy classifiers can be further studied for different input representation

Recognition of Process Disturbances for an SPC/EPC Stochastic System Using Support Vector Machine and Artificial Neural Network Approaches

Because of the excellent performance on monitoring and controlling an autocorrelated process, the integration of statistical process control (SPC) and engineering process control (EPC) has drawn considerable attention in recent years. Both theoretical and empirical findings have suggested that the integration of SPC and EPC can be an effective way to improve the quality of a process, especially when the underlying process is autocorrelated. However, because EPC compensates for the effects of underlying disturbances, the disturbance patterns are embedded and hard to be recognized. Effective recognition of disturbance patterns is a very important issue for process improvement since disturbance patterns would be associated with certain assignable causes which affect the process. In practical situations, after compensating by EPC, the underlying disturbance patterns could be of any mixture types which are totally different from the original patterns. This study proposes the integration of support vector machine (SVM) and artificial neural network (ANN) approaches to recognize the disturbance patterns of the underlying disturbances. Experimental results revealed that the proposed schemes are able to effectively recognize various disturbance patterns of an SPC/EPC system

Recognition of Mixture Control Chart Pattern Using Multiclass Support Vector Machine and Genetic Algorithm Based on Statistical and Shape Features

Control charts have been widely utilized for monitoring process variation in numerous applications. Abnormal patterns exhibited by control charts imply certain potentially assignable causes that may deteriorate the process performance. Most of the previous studies are concerned with the recognition of single abnormal control chart patterns (CCPs). This paper introduces an intelligent hybrid model for recognizing the mixture CCPs that includes three main aspects: feature extraction, classifier, and parameters optimization. In the feature extraction, statistical and shape features of observation data are used in the data input to get the effective data for the classifier. A multiclass support vector machine (MSVM) applies for recognizing the mixture CCPs. Finally, genetic algorithm (GA) is utilized to optimize the MSVM classifier by searching the best values of the parameters of MSVM and kernel function. The performance of the hybrid approach is evaluated by simulation experiments, and simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach is able to effectively recognize mixture CCPs

An Unsupervised Consensus Control Chart Pattern Recognition Framework

Early identification and detection of abnormal time series patterns is vital for a number of manufacturing. Slide shifts and alterations of time series patterns might be indicative of some anomaly in the production process, such as machinery malfunction. Usually due to the continuous flow of data monitoring of manufacturing processes requires automated Control Chart Pattern Recognition(CCPR) algorithms. The majority of CCPR literature consists of supervised classification algorithms. Less studies consider unsupervised versions of the problem. Despite the profound advantage of unsupervised methodology for less manual data labeling their use is limited due to the fact that their performance is not robust enough for practical purposes. In this study we propose the use of a consensus clustering framework. Computational results show robust behavior compared to individual clustering algorithms

A modelling-oriented scheme for control chart pattern recognition

Control charts are graphical tools that monitor and assess the performance of production processes, revealing abnormal (deterministic) disturbances when there is a fault. Simple patterns belonging to one of six types can be observed when a fault is occurring, and a Normal pattern when the process is performing under its intended conditions. Machine Learning algorithms have been implemented in this research to enable automatic identification of simple patterns. Two pattern generation schemes (PGS) for synthesising patterns are proposed in this work. These PGSs ensure generality, randomness, and comparability, as well as allowing the further categorisation of the studied patterns. One of these PGSs was developed for processes that fulfil the NIID (Normally, identically and independently distributed) condition, and the other for three first-order lagged time series models. This last PGS was used as base to generate patterns of feedback-controlled processes. Using the three aforementioned processes, control chart pattern recognition (CCPR) systems for these process types were proposed and studied. Furthermore, taking the recognition accuracy as a performance measure, the arrangement of input factors that achieved the highest accuracies for each of the CCPR systems was determined. Furthermore, a CCPR system for feedback-controlled processes was developed

A study of new and advanced control charts for two categories of time related processes

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH