A hybrid system for SPC concurrent pattern recognition

Any nonrandom patterns shown in Statistical Process Control (SPC) charts imply possible assignable causes that may deteriorate the process performance. Hence, timely detecting and recognizing Control Chart Patterns (CCPs) for nonrandomness is very important in the implementation of SPC. Due to the limitations of run-rule-based approaches, Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) have been resorted for detecting CCPs. However, most of the reported ANN approaches are only limited to recognize single basic patterns. Different from these approaches, this paper presents a hybrid approach by integrating wavelet method with ANNs for on-line recognition of CCPs including concurrent patterns. The main advantage of this approach is its capability of recognizing coexisted or concurrent patterns without training by concurrent patterns. The test results using simulated data have demonstrated the improvements and the effectiveness of the methodology with a success rate up to 91.41% in concurrent CCP recognition.     

Concurrent control chart patterns recognition with singular spectrum analysis and support vector machine

Since abnormal control chart patterns (CCPs) are indicators of production processes being out-of-control, it is a critical task to recognize these patterns effectively based on process measurements. Most methods on CCP recognition assume that the process data only suffers from single type of unnatural pattern. In reality, the observed process data could be the combination of several basic patterns, which leads to severe performance degradations in these methods. To address this problem, some independent component analysis (ICA) based schemes have been proposed. However, some limitations are observed in these algorithms, such as lacking of the capability of monitoring univariate processes with only one key measurement, misclassifications caused by the inherent permutation and scaling ambiguities, and inconsistent solution. This paper proposes a novel hybrid approach based on singular spectrum analysis (SSA) and support vector machine (SVM) to identify concurrent CCPs. In the proposed method, the observed data is first separated by SSA into multiple basic components, and then these separated components are classified by SVM for pattern recognition. The scheme is suitable for univariate concurrent CCPs identification, and the results are stable since it does not have shortcomings found in the ICA-based schemes. Furthermore, it has good generalization performance of dealing with the small samples. Superior performance of the proposed algorithm is achieved in simulations.     

A hybrid learning-based model for on-line detection and analysis of control chart patterns

Unnatural control chart patterns (CCPs) are associated with a particular set of assignable causes for process variation. Therefore, effectively recognizing CCPs can substantially narrow down the set of possible causes to be examined, and accelerate the diagnostic search. In recent years, neural networks (NNs) have been successfully used to the CCP recognition task. The emphasis has been on the CCP detection rather than more detailed quantification of information of the CCP. Additionally, a common problem in existing NN-based CCP recognition methods is that of discriminating between various types of CCP that share similar features in a real-time recognition scheme. This work presents a hybrid learning-based model, which integrates NN and DT learning techniques, to detect and discriminate typical unnatural CCPs, while identifying the major parameter (such as the shift displacement or trend slope) and starting point of the CCP detected. The performance of the model was evaluated by simulation, and numerical and graphical results that demonstrate that the proposed model performs effectively and efficiently in on-line CCP recognition task are provided. Although this work considers the specific application of a real-time CCP recognition model for the individuals (X) chart, the proposed learning-based methodology can be applied to other control charts (such as the X-bar chart).     

Simultaneous process mean and variance monitoring using artificial neural networks

Control chart patterns (CCPs) can be employed to determine the behavior of a process. Hence, CCP recognition is an important issue for an effective process-monitoring system. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) have been applied to CCP recognition tasks and promising results have been obtained. It is well known that mean and variance control charts are usually implemented together and that these two charts are not independent of each other, especially for the individual measurements and moving range (X–R_m) charts. CCPs on the mean and variance charts can be associated independently with different assignable causes when corresponding process knowledge is available. However, ANN-based CCP recognition models for process mean and variance have mostly been developed separately in the literature with the other parameter assumed to be under control. Little attention has been given to the use of ANNs for monitoring the process mean and variance simultaneously. This study presents a real-time ANN-based model for the simultaneous recognition of both mean and variance CCPs. Three most common CCP types, namely shift, trend, and cycle, for both mean and variance are addressed in this work. Both direct data and selected statistical features extracted from the process are employed as the inputs of ANNs. The numerical results obtained using extensive simulation indicate that the proposed model can effectively recognize not only single mean or variance CCPs but also mixed CCPs in which mean and variance CCPs exist concurrently. Empirical comparisons show that the proposed model performs better than existing approaches in detecting mean and variance shifts, while also providing the capability of CCP recognition that is very useful for bringing the process back to the in-control condition. A demonstrative example is provided.     

Mixture control chart patterns recognition using independent component analysis and support vector machine

Effective recognition of control chart patterns (CCPs) is an important issue since abnormal patterns exhibited in control charts can be associated with certain assignable causes which affect the process. Most of the existing studies assume that the observed process data which needs to be recognized are basic types of abnormal CCPs. However, in practical situations, the observed process data could be mixture patterns, which consist of two basic CCPs combined together. In this study, a hybrid scheme using independent component analysis (ICA) and support vector machine (SVM) is proposed for CCPs recognition. The proposed hybrid ICA-SVM scheme initially applies an ICA to the mixture patterns in order to generate independent components (ICs). The hidden basic patterns of the mixture patterns can be discovered in these ICs. The ICs can then serve as the input variables of the SVM for building a CCP recognition model. Experimental results revealed that the proposed scheme is able to effectively recognize mixture control chart patterns and outperform the single SVM models, which did not use an ICA as a preprocessor.     

Identification of concurrent control chart patterns with singular spectrum analysis and learning vector quantization

Identification of unnatural control chart patterns (CCPs) from manufacturing process measurements is a critical task in quality control as these patterns indicate that the manufacturing process is out-of-control. Recently, there have been numerous efforts in developing pattern recognition and classification methods based on artificial neural network to automatically recognize unnatural patterns. Most of them assume that a single type of unnatural pattern exists in process data. Due to this restrictive assumption, severe performance degradations are observed in these methods when unnatural concurrent CCPs present in process data. To address this problem, this paper proposes a novel approach based on singular spectrum analysis (SSA) and learning vector quantization network to identify concurrent CCPs. The main advantage of the proposed method is that it can be applied to the identification of concurrent CCPs in univariate manufacturing processes. Moreover, there are no permutation and scaling ambiguities in the CCPs recovered by the SSA. These desirable features make the proposed algorithm an attractive alternative for the identification of concurrent CCPs. Computer simulations and a real application for aluminium smelting processes confirm the superior performance of proposed algorithm for sets of typical concurrent CCPs.     

Effective recognition of control chart patterns in autocorrelated data using a support vector machine based approach

The effective recognition of unnatural control chart patterns (CCPs) is a critical issue in statistical process control, as unnatural CCPs can be associated with specific assignable causes adversely affecting the process. Machine learning techniques, such as artificial neural networks (ANNs), have been widely used in the research field of CCP recognition. However, ANN approaches can easily overfit the training data, producing models that can suffer from the difficulty of generalization. This causes a pattern misclassification problem when the training examples contain a high level of background noise (common cause variation). Support vector machines (SVMs) embody the structural risk minimization, which has been shown to be superior to the traditional empirical risk minimization principle employed by ANNs. This research presents a SVM-based CCP recognition model for the on-line real-time recognition of seven typical types of unnatural CCP, assuming that the process observations are AR(1) correlated over time. Empirical comparisons indicate that the proposed SVM-based model achieves better performance in both recognition accuracy and recognition speed than the model based on a learning vector quantization network. Furthermore, the proposed model is more robust toward background noise in the process data than the model based on a back propagation network. These results show the great potential of SVM methods for on-line CCP recognition.     

A hybrid approach for identification of concurrent control chart patterns

Control chart patterns (CCPs) are widely used to identify the potential process problems in modern manufacturing industries. The earliest statistical techniques, including chart and R chart, are respectively used for monitoring process mean and process variance. Recently, pattern recognition techniques based on artificial neural network (ANN) are very popular to be applied to recognize unnatural CCPs. However, most of them are limited to recognize simple CCPs arising from single type of unnatural variation. In other words, they are incapable to handle the problem of concurrent CCPs where two types of unnatural variation exist together within the manufacturing process. To facilitate the research gap, this paper presents a hybrid approach based on independent component analysis (ICA) and decision tree (DT) to identify concurrent CCPs. Without loss of generality, six types of concurrent CCPs are used to validate the proposed method. Experimental results show that the proposed approach is very successful to handle most of the concurrent CCPs. The proposed method has two limitations in real application: it needs at least two concurrent CCPs to reconstruct their source patterns and it may be incapable to handle the concurrent pattern incurred by two correlated process (“upward trend” and “upward shift”).     

A neural network approach to characterize pattern parameters in process control charts

Abnormal patterns on manufacturing process control charts can reveal potential quality problems due to assignable causes at an early stage, helping to prevent defects and improve quality performance. In recent years, neural networks have been applied to the pattern recognition task for control charts. The emphasis has been on pattern detection and identification rather than more detailed pattern parameter information, such as shift magnitude, trend slope, etc., which is vital for effective assignable cause analysis. Moreover, the identification of concurrent patterns (where two or more patterns exist together) which are commonly encountered in practical manufacturing processes has not been reported. This paper proposes a neural network-based approach to recognize typical abnormal patterns and in addition to accurately identify key parameters of the specific patterns involved. Both single and concurrent patterns can be characterized using this approach. A sequential pattern analysis (SPA) design was adopted to tackle complexity and prevent interference between pattern categories. The performance of the model has been evaluated using a simulation approach, and numerical and graphical results are presented which demonstrate that the approach performs effectively in control chart pattern recognition and accurately identifies the key parameters of the recognized pattern(s) in both single and concurrent pattern circumstances.     

A control chart pattern recognition system using a statistical correlation coefficient method

This paper presents a control chart pattern recognition system using a statistical correlation coefficient method. Pattern recognition techniques have been widely applied to identify unnatural patterns in control charts. Most of them are capable of recognizing a single unnatural pattern for different abnormal types. However, before an unnatural pattern occurs, a change point from normal to abnormal may appear at any point in control charts for most practical cases. Moreover, concurrent patterns where two unnatural patterns simultaneously exist may also occur in a control chart pattern recognition system. Our statistical correlation coefficient approach is a simple mechanism for recognizing these unnatural control chart patterns with good performance. This approach is also an effective method for the control chart pattern recognition without a tedious training process.     

Recognition of control chart patterns using improved selection of features

Recognition of various control chart patterns (CCPs) can significantly reduce the diagnostic search process. Feature-based approaches can facilitate efficient pattern recognition. The full potentiality of feature-based approaches can be achieved by using the optimal set of features. In this paper, a set of seven most useful features is selected using a classification and regression tree (CART)-based systematic approach for feature selection. Based on these features, eight most commonly observed CCPs are recognized using heuristic and artificial neural network (ANN) techniques. Extensive performance evaluation of the two types of recognizers reveals that both these recognizers result in higher recognition accuracy than the earlier reported feature-based recognizers. In this work, various features are extracted from the control chart plot of actual process data in such a way that their values become independent of the process mean and standard deviation. Thus, the developed feature-based CCP recognizers can be applicable to any general process.     

On line detection of mean and variance shift using neural networks and support vector machine in multivariate processes

The effective recognition of unnatural control chart patterns (CCPs) is one of the most important tools to identify process problems. In multivariate process control, the main problem of multivariate quality control charts is that they can detect an out of control event but do not directly determine which variable or group of variables has caused the out of control signal and how much is the magnitude of out of control. Recently machine learning techniques, such as artificial neural networks (ANNs), have been widely used in the research field of CCP recognition. This study presents a modular model for on-line analysis of out of control signals in multivariate processes. This model consists of two modules. In the first module using a support vector machine (SVM)-classifier, mean shift and variance shift can be recognized. Then in the second module, using two special neural networks for mean and variance, it can be recognized magnitude of shift for each variable simultaneously. Through evaluation and comparison, our research results show that the proposed modular performs substantially better than the traditional corresponding control charts. The main contributions of this work are recognizing the type of unnatural pattern and classifying the magnitude of shift for mean and variance in each variable simultaneously.     

Recognition of control chart patterns using an intelligent technique

Control chart patterns (CCPs) are important statistical process control tools for determining whether a process is run in its intended mode or in the presence of unnatural patterns. Automatic recognition of abnormal patterns in control charts has seen increasing demands nowadays in the manufacturing processes. This paper presents a novel hybrid intelligent method for recognition of common types of CCP. The proposed method includes three main modules: the feature extraction module, the classifier module and optimization module. In the feature extraction module, a proper set of the shape features and statistical features is proposed as the efficient characteristic of the patterns. In the classifier module multilayer perceptron neural network and support vector machine (SVM) are investigated. In support vector machine training, the hyper-parameters have very important roles for its recognition accuracy. Therefore, in the optimization module, improved bees algorithm is proposed for selecting of appropriate parameters of the classifier. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm has very high recognition accuracy.     

基于小波重构的控制图并发异常模式识别研究

对于统计质量控制过程中的复杂过程而言,多种异常的并发现象比较普遍,而常规的基于规则的方法以及人工神经网络（ANNs）技术均针对单一异常模式的识别,难以完成对并发异常模式的识别任务。提出一种混合方法,将小波分析与ANNs相结合,通过小波分解重构将并发异常模式分解为基本的异常模式组合,无须用并发异常样本训练ANNs,实现对并发异常模式的有效识别。     

An hybrid detection system of control chart patterns using cascaded SVM and neural network�Cbased detector

Early detection of unnatural control chart patterns (CCP) is desirable for any industrial process. Most of recent CCP recognition works are on statistical feature extraction and artificial neural network (ANN)-based recognizers. In this paper, a two-stage hybrid detection system has been proposed using support vector machine (SVM) with self-organized maps. Direct Cosine transform of the CCP data is taken as input. Simulation results show significant improvement over conventional recognizers, with reduced detection window length. An analogous recognition system consisting of statistical feature vector input to the SVM classifier is further developed for comparison.     

Feature-based recognition of control chart patterns

Control charts primarily in the form of chart are widely used to identify the situations when control actions will be needed for manufacturing systems. Various types of patterns are observed in control charts. Identification of these control chart patterns (CCPs) can provide clues to potential quality problems in the manufacturing process. Each type of control chart pattern has its own geometric shape and various related features can represent this shape. Feature-based approaches can facilitate efficient pattern recognition since extracted shape features represent the main characteristics of the patterns in a condensed form. In this paper, a set of eight new features, extraction of which does not call for utilizing the experience and skill of the user in any form, is presented. Two feature-based approaches using heuristics and artificial neural network (ANN) are developed, which are capable of recognizing eight most commonly observed CCPs including stratification and systematic patterns. Relative performances of the feature-based heuristic and feature-based ANN recognizers are extensively studied using synthetic pattern data. The feature-based ANN recognizer results in better recognition performance and generalization compared to the feature-based heuristic recognizer.     

A survey of control-chart pattern-recognition literature (1991–2010) based on a new conceptual classification scheme

Control Chart Pattern Recognition (CCPR) is a critical task in Statistical Process Control (SPC). Abnormal patterns exhibited in control charts can be associated with certain assignable causes adversely affecting the process stability. Abundant literature treats the detection of different Control Chart Patterns (CCPs). In fact, numerous CCPR studies have been developed according to various objectives and hypotheses. Despite the widespread literature on this topic, efforts to review and analyze research on CCPR are very limited. For this reason, this survey paper proposes a new conceptual classification scheme, based on content analysis method, to classify past and current developments in CCPR research. More than 120 papers published on CCPR studies within 1991–2010 were classified and analyzed. Major findings of this survey include the following. (1) The most popular CCPR studies deal with independently and identically distributed process data. (2) Some recent studies on identification of mean shifts or/and variance shifts of a multivariate process are based on innovative techniques. (3) The percentage of studies that address concurrent pattern identification is increasing. (4) The majority of the reviewed articles use Artificial Neural Network (ANN) approach. Feature-based techniques, in particular wavelet-denoise, are investigated for improving the recognition performance of ANN. For the same reason, there is a general trend followed by many authors who propose hybrid, modular and integrated ANN recognizer designs combined with decision tree learning, particle swarm optimization, etc. (5) There are two main categories of performance criteria used to evaluate CCPR approaches: statistical criteria that are related to two conventional Average Run Length (ARL) measures, and recognition-accuracy criteria, which are not based on these ARL measures. The most applied criteria are recognition-accuracy criteria, mainly for ANN-based approaches. Performance criteria which are related to ARL measures are insufficient and inappropriate in the case of concurrent pattern identification. Finally, this paper briefly discusses some future research directions and our perspectives.     

Recognition of control chart patterns using fuzzy SVM with a hybrid kernel function

Accurate control chart patterns recognition (CCPR) plays an essential role in the implementation of control charts. However, it is a challenging problem since nonrandom control chart patterns (CCPs) are normally distorted by “common process variations”. In this paper, a novel method of CCPR by integrating fuzzy support vector machine (SVM) with hybrid kernel function and genetic algorithm (GA) is proposed. Firstly, two shape features and two statistical features that do not depend on the distribution parameters and number of samples are presented to explicitly describe the characteristics of CCPs. Then, a novel multiclass method based on fuzzy SVM with a hybrid kernel function is proposed. In this method, the influence of outliers on classification accuracy of SVM-based classifiers is weakened by assigning a degree of membership for every training sample. Meanwhile, a hybrid kernel function combining Gaussian kernel and polynomial kernel is adopted to further enhance the generalization ability of the classifiers. To solve the issue of features selection and parameters optimization, GA is used to simultaneously optimize the input features subsets and parameters of fuzzy SVM-based classifier. Finally, several simulation experiments and a real example are addressed to validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed methodology. And the results of simulation experiments demonstrate that it can achieve excellent performance for CCPR and outperforms other approaches, such as learning vector quantization network, multi-layer perceptron network, probability neural network, fuzzy clustering and SVM, in term of recognition accuracy. The results of the practical cases manifest that the proposed method has application potential for solving the problem of control chart interpretation in real-world.     

Application of integrated recurrent neural network with multivariate adaptive regression splines on SPC-EPC process

The integration of statistical process control and engineering process control has been reported as an effective way to monitor and control the autocorrelated process. However, because engineering process control compensates for the effects of underlying disturbances, the disturbance patterns become very hard to recognize, especially when various abnormal control chart patterns are mixed and co-existed in the engineering process. In this study, a new control chart pattern recognition model which integrates multivariate adaptive regression splines and recurrent neural network is proposed to not only address the problem of feature selection (i.e., lagged process measurements) but also improve the pattern recognition accuracy. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated by comparing the recognition results of multivariate adaptive regression splines and recurrent neural network with the results of four competing approaches (multivariate adaptive regression splines-extreme learning machine, multivariate adaptive regression splines-random forest, single recurrent neural network, and single random forest) on the simulated individual process data. The experimental study shows that the proposed multivariate adaptive regression splines and recurrent neural network approach can not only solve the problem of variable selection but also outperform other competing models. Moreover, according to the lagged process measurements selected by the proposed approach, lagged observations that exerted significant impact on the construction of the control chart pattern recognition model can be identified successfully. This study has significant implications for research and practice in production management and provides a valuable reference for manufacturing process managers to better understand and develop strategies for control chart pattern recognition.