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Int. J. Quality Engineering and Technology, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2012

A double neural network approach for the identification and parameter estimation of control chart patterns Ahmed Shaban*
Industrial Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Fayoum University, Fayoum 63514, Egypt E-mail: ass00@fayoum.edu.eg *Corresponding author

Mohamed A. Shalaby
Mechanical Design and Production Department, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, Giza 12613, Egypt E-mail: mashalaby@aucegypt.edu
Abstract: The exhibited pattern on a control chart is classified as either natural or unnatural pattern. The presence of an unnatural pattern is evidence that a process is out of control. This paper devises neural networks as an intelligent tool to automate the identification of the different control chart patterns, and to accurately estimate their parameters. Two neural networks, named NN-1 and NN-2, are integrated together to perform the identification and the parameter estimation. The first stage NN-1 is developed to identify the existing pattern in the control data, and the second stage NN-2 is used to estimate the parameters of that pattern. NN-1 is developed to identify the five basic control chart patterns; namely: natural, upward shift, downward shift, upward trend, and downward trend. The probability of success in identifying the correct control charts pattern and its parameters is used to evaluate the performance of both NN-1and NN-2. Performance results of NN-1 and NN-2 are compared with other previous leading research work. Comparisons show that the proposed neural network approach yield better probability of success than the others. Keywords: quality control; control chart patterns; natural pattern; unnatural patterns; upward shift; downward shift; upward trend; downward trend; pattern identification; parameter estimation; probability of success; neural networks. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Shaban, A. and Shalaby, M.A. (2012) A double neural network approach for the identification and parameter estimation of control chart patterns, Int. J. Quality Engineering and Technology, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp.124138.

Copyright 2012 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

A double neural network approach

Biographical notes: Ahmed Shaban is an Assistant Lecturer in Industrial Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Fayoum University, Fayoum, Egypt. He obtained his BSc in Industrial Engineering in 2006 with honour degree, Fayoum University, and MSc in 2010 in Mechanical Design and Production from Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt. Currently, he is conducting his PhD research in Supply Chain Management at the University of Rome La Sapienza, Rome, Italy. His research interests are in the applications of AI in quality and operations management, logistics and supply chain management, and modelling and optimisation. Mohamed A. Shalaby is a Professor of IE at the Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, Egypt. He received his BSc in 1970 in Production Engineering, Cairo University, MS and PhD in 1978 in Engineering Management and Operations Research from Southern Methodist University, Dallas, USA. He assumed his academic career at Arkansas Tech University, The American University in Cairo, and Cairo University. He is also a Professional Consultant in most facets of IE, and has research interests in modelling and simulation of manufacturing systems.

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Introduction

A control chart is a statistical process control technique widely is used to control industrial process (Montgomery, 1996). The behaviour of the process data on a control chart indicates whether the manufacturing process is in control or out of control. The presence of an unnatural pattern such as shifts in process mean, or trends as shown in Figure 1 means that a process is out of control. The accurate identification of these unnatural patterns will help the quality practitioners to determine the assignable causes for process variation. Moreover, the information about control chart unnatural patterns parameters such as shift magnitude and trend slope is very important for quality practitioners. The sizable shift magnitude or trend slope means that a catastrophic problem may be happened in the process and needs a quick intervention and further technical investigation. Traditional control charts cannot provide any pattern related information. Many supplementary rules such as zone tests or run rules have been suggested to assist quality practitioners in detecting the unnatural patterns (Nelson, 1984; Western Electric; 1956). Other researchers introduced new types of control charts that detect certain types of patterns such as shift (Page, 1954) and cyclic variation (Johnson and Counts, 1979; Beneke et al., 1988). Also, many researchers tried to automate the analysis of control chart patterns by developing Expert Systems to limit the human intervention in the analysis of the control chart (Cheng and Hubele, 1992; Swift and Mize, 1995). More recently; artificial neural network (ANN) approach has been investigated. Dislike expert systems approaches; ANN does not require explicit rules to identify patterns. It acquires initial knowledge of how to identify patterns by learning. Moreover ANN models are expected to overcome the problem of high false alarm rate; because it does not depend on any statistical tests that are usually required for the traditional methods. Also, no human intervention will be required when applying ANN, and thus pattern identification can be readily integrated with automated inspection, rapid manufacturing technologies, and computer integrated manufacturing.