Copyright © IFAC Information Control in Manufacturing,

Nancy - Metz, France, 1998

ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS IN MANUFACTURING PROCESSES:

MONITORING AND CONTROL

H. S. Cho* and M. C. Leu**

•Department ofMechanical Engineering

Korea Advanced Institute ofScience and Technology
373-1, Kusung-dong, Yusong-gu, Taejon, 305-701, Korea
Tel: +82-42-869-3213/ Fax: +82-42-869-3210/ e-mail: hscho@lca.kaist.ac.kr

··Department ofMechanical Engineering

New Jersey Institute o/Technology, University Heights
Newark, NJ 07102-1982, USA
Tel: + 1-201-596-3335/ Fax: + 1-201-596-5601 / e-mail: mleu@nsfgov

Abstract:
The nature of today's manufacturing processes is changing with greater speed and becomes
tremendously sophisticated than ever due to rapid variations in their environments resulting from
paradigm shift in customer demand and from reduced product life cycle.
This has required a higher level of technology in manufacturing that can adapt to the nature
change. In the recent years, neural networks are becoming a real powerful technology to solve this
and leading manufacturing technology to enter a new era for intelligent manufacturing. This paper
presents the status of the art of neural network applications in a variety of manufacturing
processes. In particular, their applications to process monitoring and control are spotlighted by
discussing the nature of the problems, the justification of network application and their influence
on process performance. Copyright © 1998 IFAC

Keywords : Artificial intelligence, Manufacturing processes, Neural networks, Process models,

Process control, Quality control

(2) estimating the changes of the product quality

1. INTRODUCTION
The current intense competition in global and domestic
markets is continuously demanding manufacturers to
produce products of higher quality with much less cost.
The implication of this is that today's manufacturing
systems needs to be equipped with such functionalities as
intelligence, efficiency and flexibility, thus having
demanded a new paradigm shift in manufacturing
technology.
The quality monitoring and control technology area is no
exception that desperately requires such paradigm shift,
since this technological area is crucial to assurance of final
product quality and production efficiency. The assured
quality can be provided only by in-process monitoring and
control which can measure the process state or the product
quality and based upon these measured information correct
the process operation so as to achieve the desired quality.
Performing this important task consists of several distinct
technological steps:
(1) identifying the characteristic changes of a
process
(3) correcting the process operation, overserving
the resulting product quality and comparing the
observed quality with the desired.
Normal operation of these action steps should not be
interrupted and needs to be carried out with minimal
supervision and assistance from operators, if possible in
unmanned manner. To provide the processes with these
capabilities, several basic functionalities such as storing
informations, decision making, learning and integration of
these into the processes are the most essentials among
others.
Most of manufacturing processes have the random,
complex and uncertain nature due to time-varying
parameters and disturbances. These characteristics have
made it difficult to rely only on human operator's
observation and experience in coping with changes in
manufacturing environments. [1 ] For this reason, in recent
years, neural network has drawn an explosion of interest in
applying this technique to process monitoring and control.
This is because it has the above mentioned basic
functionalities that can overcome the ill-natured process
characteristics.

529
 estimator. The figure illustrates two indirect methods of
The purpose of this paper is to present the applications and monitoring and control of a process. Direct method, that is
perspectives of artificial neural networks in manufacturing the direct measurement and control of product quality is not
process monitoring and control. The natures of the considered here for discussion, since direct in-process
processes considered herein are described in as detail as quality measurement is extremely difficult and in most
possible to give reasons and justifications for applying the processes virtually impossible. Note that in this block
networks. The network implementation procedure is briefly diagram the network is not utilized for control purpose but
dealt with to provide how it can be combined with the only for quality estimation.
process quality variables.
Both methods are similar in principle. The methods shown
2. MONITORING AND CONTROL ISSUES in Fig. 2 utilize the process variables x to assess the product
qualities q of the process and these x are the variables that
Most of manufacturing process have the characteristics of need to be controlled in order to keep the q to desired levels.
uncertain, time-varying, highly nonlinear and complex See the feedback loop for method 1 and the feed forward
system. This may be attributable to the fact that they are loop for method 2. Thus,
exposed to external disturbance and noise and often
subjected to parameter variations. Furthermore, the input q =/ (x) ; q T = [q J' q] .... ,q m I X T = [x J ' X]'··· , X p ] (1)
variables operating the processes are interacted with each
other, and each individual effect on quality can not be
where the / represents the functions that relate the quality
assessed clearly. Due to these characteristics their quality
variables to the process state variables, and the super script
often varies from product to product, impairing its
T denotes the transpose of (.). Indirect monitoring or
uniformity and decreasing the yield of the product. These
measurement, therefore, implies finding the functional fonn
actually bring about degradation of product quality and even
described in Eq.( 1). These functions, however can not be
cause malfunction and failure of machines in the process.
easily formulated or modeled via an analytical means, but
may be found by aid of experimental investigation. This
To avoid any occurrences unfavorable for quality
situation calls for intervention of artificial neural networks
maintenance, monitoring and control functions are essential
to model these relationships via learning based upon a priori
in the process. These functions are in fact playing core roles
knowledge and experience on the process. The role of the
in today's manufacturing and will become a pervasive
networks here is reasoning, learning decision making, based
ingredient together with artificial intelligence in making the
upon perception of data coming out of monitoring sensors.
future processes truly intelligent and autonomous. The
It is noted here that determination of which x among the
reaearch efforts in this direction will be accelerated with
process variables will best represent the quality variables is
greater interest in the future and will lead to the
the prerequisite task to proceed the analysis.
development of truly intelligent manufacturing systems that
are capable of producing products without the supervision
Once the relationship between the process state and quality
or assistance of human operators.
variables is found, the next task is then to control the
process based upon information on the state variables
Fig.l classifies the functionalities needed to imbed
obtained by on-line measurements. The first method
intelligence on manufacturing processes by neural networks
compares the estimated quality variables with those of the
and summarizes the current developments in manufacturing
desired, while the second one utilizes the measurable
application areas. The reasoning, learning, decision maki~g
process variables as the controlled variables. In this control
etc. constitute the core of functionalities needed to bUild
problem, designing a suitable controller exhibits an inherent
human-like intelligence. These functionalities create the
difficulty because most of the processes to be controlled .are
techniques such as mapping, pattern matching, pattern
poorly known or even uncertain. This situation also requ~res
clustering and recognition, self-organizing etc. that are an
the participation of the networks to generate an appropnate
ingradient of making real worlds intelligent. In particular,
signal for control. Several basic concepts of a neural
pattern clustering and matching and mapping are the basic
network controller are illustrated in Fig. 4.
and core capabilities that can be created by neural networks.
The real world applications here in manufacturing include
the modeling, minotoring and control, identification, 3. ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS
planning and scheduling associated with the processes.
There have come out a flurry of research works in the
The foregoing discussions reveal that a clear nee~ e~ists for
monitoring and control issues. In monitoring of the
tools to assist in monitoring and control. In monltonng, the
processes, feature-based monitoring is the most frequently
process states are sampled every fixed time interval and
used method, since it utilizes suitable signitures of the
these captured data are utilized for certain goals of analyses.
sensor signals that can characterize and identify the pro~ess
These goals may be at supervision, pattern recognition ~d
states. These features are time, frequency and/or topological
fault diagnosis which are vital to the manufactunng
domain of the sensor or processed signal. Fig.2 shows a
operation.
procedure of evaluating product quality index or process
states from measurement of process state variables and/or
Solving this problem with traditional approaches requires
machine condition variables. In this procedure the role of
construction of a data base which is tremendously large and
ANN is to learn clustering and pattern recognition in
time consuming to develop, otherwise they often fail to
unsupervised or supervised manner using the extracted
provide the fine resolution required for accurate solut~ons.
features defined in a feature space. In some cases, the works
Similarly, in control, the traditional approach to effectively
of pattern classification and recognition are not necessary,
and accurately control the processes breaks down when the
since the neural network can be utilized to relate the features
dynamic characteristics of the processes to be controlled are
to the associated quality directly. Fig.3 shows a direct link
unknown, uncertain or ill-defined. In this case, knowledge
of the process variables with quality though the quality

530
of the process dynamics should be provided before
controller design action is initiated. Artificial neural and, similarly
networks(ANN) are an apparently efficient approach to
solve these important problems and require no conventional f) ~(t+l)=f) ~(t)+~f) ~(t)
programming to use.[I-6] The ANN learns the correlation (6)
between input prototypes and the desired outcome in case of ~f)
k OE
=-1}--
the supervised learning, for example. After training the ) OB ~
networks are capable of generating appropriate outputs in
response to new inputs, which is the generalization ability. With the learning algorithm specified in this manner, the
This is the property that most applications enjoy in ANN can be trained and tested using data obtained from
monitoring and control areas. experiments.

Depending upon the types of the problem, a variety of
network architectures has been used as depicted in Table
2.[7-68] The table shows only a limited number of ANN
applications due to space limitation. It can be seen that the
most frequently used ANN architecture is the multilayer
perceptron. The use of the Kohonen, ART(I) and (2),
Hopfield network is also becoming popular, since these NN
structures provide very effective capabilities of self
organization and optimization of manufacturing problems.
The adaptive resonant (ART) network developed by
Capenter and Grossberg [4,5] has been widely used in
pattern recognition and serves the purpose of cluster
discovery. This network learns clusters in an unsupervised
mode. As shown in Fig.2(b), the network consists of two
layers. The top most layer computes the matching score
reflecting the degree of similarity of the present input to the
previously encoded clusters, which is the bottom-to-top
processing.

The multilayer perceptron [2,3] illustrated in Fig.3(a)
consists of an input layer, a hidden layer and an output layer.
This network finds the functional relationship f in Eq.(l)
between the input x and the output q. In this, along with
learning algorithm the architecture affects the performance
of the neural network. That is to say, the number of hidden
layers and that of nodes(processing units) in each layer are
the important factors which has to be carefully determined.
This is because these factors directly influence the modeling
accuracy and convergence of the learning. Referring to the
figure, the net input to node j in layer k is given by
(2)
This part is functionally identical to Hamming net and
Maxnet [3,6]. In the figure e denotes the lateral interaction
coefficient while ~ indicates the unit delay. The top-down
part of the networks checks the similarity of the winning
neuron j with the stored cluster reference data and performs
the vigilance test on
(7)
where p is the vigilance parameter and the norm I~II
denotes

where wIt), is the connection strength, i.e. the weight IIxll= tlx,l'
1=1

between the rh
node in the (k-l)th layer and Joth node in the
kth layer. The output of node j is represented by a sigmoid If an input pattern is clustered with cluster j, the network
function weights are updated by

(3) v (t)x
o" =f ( net le) = - - - - -1- - - - - Wlj(t+l) = I)n 1
(8)
) ) 1 + exp [- (net; + 0; )/ 00 ]
0.5 + L vij (t)x;
1=)

where Ok represents a threshold or bias and 00 is included

)

to alter the shape of the function.

Training the ANN implies updating the
given teaching signal. The updates are based upon the
minimization of a network system error defined by
The ART 1 network discussed herein is a simplified version
w;, and e; for a of the network and can classify only binary inputs. On the
other hand, the ART 2 network can handle analog inputs.
In most of the monitoring and control problems listed in
Table 2 the networks try to formulate the relationship as
(4) expressed in Eq.( 1). In this case the functional form can be
rewritten as

where m is the m th output node in the output layer.

f~NN

The minimization can be carried out by a steepest descent q = NN(x);qT = [q"q], .. ·,q",lx T = [x"x], ... ,x p ] (9)
algorithm and leads to the following adaptation rules for
w;, and 0; when NN represents the functions mapped by a network.

W;I (t + 1) = W;I (t) + ~W;I (t)

(5) 4. APPLICATIONS IN MONITORING AND
le iJE CONTROL
~Wjl = -1} &tic
)1

531
As mentioned earlier, the nature of most manufacturing
processes is very complex, uncertain, and time-varying,
because they are subject to operation parameter variation
and external disturbances. Furthennore, the quality variables
associated with the products of the processes do not
sometimes exhibit a clear relationship with their operating
inputs as well as state variables.
This has been the main sources of extreme difficulty in
analysis, modeling and control. Due to this reason
manufacturers have needed to rely on somewhat an
intelligent method which can exhibit the capabilities of
infonnation storing, learning, reasoning and decision
making. This necessity has led the manufacturing
technology to get into a new paradigm. It has been
understood that the next phase manufacturing will be that of
intelligent manufacturing that can adapt to changes in its
environment and can truly realize unmanned operations of
processes.
Fig.S illustrates two typical block diagrams of the neural
network-based control system. Fig.5 (a) adopts two
networks, one for process identification and the other for
process control. The feedforward network which is an
emulator is to identify the process model. The output of this
model is compared to the measured value of the actual
process output y ( k ). The resulting signal is then back
propagated to tune the NN controller with the desired
reference input Y d (k) and the one step delayed signals of
u(k -1) and y(k -1). The NN controller is essentially an
inverse dynamic model that can generate an appropriate
control input u(k) to the actuator for the Yd (k).
Fig.5 (b) represents the feedback error learning method and
the model consists of an inverse network model - a
feed forward controller and a conventional controller in the
feedforward block. The network model utilizes the control
signal u of the forward loop, since this signal tends to
f
zero as learning proceeds.
Machinin2 processes [7-32]
The major concerns of machining systems are (I)
supervision of cutting tool state (2) quality control of
machined workpieces. In supervising the cutting tool status
the ANNs utilize the cutting data such as force, vibration
and temperature obtained during real time machining
operation, and classify the status of tool wear, predict tool
life and detect tool failure in an on-line manner. Examples
of typical sensors are tool dynamometer, acoustic emission
sensor accelerometer, and thermocouple. In this processes
the networks in frequent use are the multilayer perceptron
and Kohonen.
Semiconductor manufacturin2 processes [33-38]
The complexity of plasma etching processes in integrated
circuits fabrication promoted the use of ANNs for
monitoring and control. This offers advantages in both
accuracy and robustness which could not have been
achieved by a traditional open loop control. In these
processes the networks utilizes in situ measurement of RF
power, gas flow rate, dc bias voltage and trottle positioning
which are found to be key parameters affecting process
dynamics. By use of these data the networks predict the
quality-related variables such as etching thickness and
532
etching time and offer a tool for the real-time diagnosis. The
multilayer perceptron is the most popular for this process.
Arc weldin2 processes [47-56]
Arc welding processes, as in other manufacturing processes,
suffer from the complexity of the relationship between the
process variable and the weld quality. This encouraged the
use of ANNs for quality monitoring and control of the
process. Here, the networks try to estimate the weld
geometry such as bead width, head height, penetration and
to predict the weld defects. As input variables to the
network, surface temperature, welding voltage and current
and torch speed are in popular use. Here, again, the majority
of the network is the multilayer perceptron.
Injection moldin2 processes [39-45]
Injection molding processes have a very complicated
dynamic characteristics in that the process input variables
such as melting temperature, ram velocity and holding
pressure produces the polymer flow into the model cavity in
a complex manner. The resulting flow displaces air through
the vents and forms cavity pressure. And the flow-pressure
relation together with cooling velocity are very complex,
time-varying, nonlinear and uncertain. This complexity
makes it difficult to relate the input operating variables to
the product quality such as part geometrical accuracy and
surface smoothness. In most of the studies of these
processes the multilayer perceptron is found to be the most
popular network and tries to model the process dynamics
and based on this to predict the part quality. In the
followings, we will treat two application problems in real-
time monitoring conducted in Laboratory for Control
Systems and Automation in KAIST.
In GMA welding processes [48,50], the electric arc is
generated by the flow of an electric current and maintained
between the consumable wire electrode and the weldment,
as shown in Fig.6. The consumable electrode is
automatically fed by a wire feeding device and provides
additional filler metal. To prohibit oxidation of the weld
metal resulted from its exposure the atmosphere at high
temperatures, shielding gases are provided. The geometry of
the resulting weld bead can be represented by the top bead
width, the depth of penetration and the back bead. Because a
good quality weld is characterized by the relatively high
depth to width ratio of the weld bead, the integrity of the
weld quality can be assessed by monitoring the penetration
depth or the back bead width. To monitor and control weld
geometry, the surface temperatures that are strongly related
with the formation of the weld pool are utilized.
Temperatures of three locations near the torch on the top
surface of the weldment are measured by noncontact
infrared temperature sensing system.
These surface temperature informations such as T\, T\- T2
and T1-T3 and the corresponding weld pool size indicators.
such as the top bead width and the penetration plus half
back width are taken as the input and output parameters of
the neural network estimator, respectively. The ANN
employed here was the multilayer perceptron and Eq.s (2)
through (6) were used to train the network. In the beginning
of the training, the estimated weld pool sizes may be largely
different fonn the experimental ones, because construction
of the appropriate neural network estimator is not completed.
To reduce these differences the set of the network
parameters are corrected according to the error back
propagation algorithm. The weld pool sizes are recalculated
based upon the recorrected network parameters and
compared again with the experimental ones. This iterative
training is performed for the entire training data set until the
estimation errors fall within the tolerant values. The results
show that the estimation errors are within 5% for the top
bead width, while 10% for the penetration depth plus half
back width.
In printed circuit board assembly [63,64], quality inspection
is one of the most important process, because quality control
is crucial to ensure functional reliability in the end product.
Quality inspection includes detection and classification of
defects including no solder, insufficient of excess solder,
power welding of component leads or solder pad.
Fig.7 shows the experimental test stand for inspection PCB
solder joints. This system consists of solid state CCD color
camera, illumination sources, a color image digitizer and
IBM PC with a display monitor. The illumination sources
are composed of three circular neon lamps mounted
coaxially; high angle green light is positioned at the top,
middle angle blue light is positioned next to the green, and
low angle red light is placed above the PCB. The lighting
arrangement enables us to correlate the solder joint profile
and color planes. Depending upon the profile of the joint
fillet, different color planes are obtained according to the
incident angles of the color rays as can be seen from the
figure. In this study LVQl and LVQ2 are used for pattern
classifier. These classifiers directly use the raw solder joints
images shown in Fig.S in order to classify the shape of
solder joints.
Inputs to the neurons consisting of the output layer of the
classifier are determined by the input vector composed of
the raw image data and the synaptic weights which
correspond to the prototype vectors. The outputs of the
neural network are expressed by the correlation of the input
vector and the prototype vectors. The output of each neuron
is positive-feedbacked to itself and negative-feedbacked to
the other neurons. Then only one neuron with the maximum
value converges to high positive value and the others
converge to zero. In other words, the only one neuron of the
nearest prototype vector to the current input vector which is
called "winner" is selected and input image is classified into
the class of the winner. Therefore, the position of the
prototype vectors representing the classes detennine the
decision surfaces which separate the vectors into classes.
The neural network learned in this process was implemented
in several PCBs of various types. The results showed that
the success rate of correct classification reaches 95%.
5. CONCLUSIONS
The current intense competition in markets demands on
manufacturer to produce high quality products with lower
cost and higher productivity. This stringent situation has
become an issue of growing importance in manufacturing
community. Recently, artificial neural networks have
emerged as an intelligent tool to approach to this problem
and are shown to offer great promise especially in
monitoring and control of manufacturing processes.
In this paper, the monitoring and control problems were
identified and the use of artificial neural network to solve
533
these was justified. Types of sensor signals, network
structures and output variables were reviewed for
application domains covering a variety of processes.
Based upon this review work, some major conclusive
remarks on current shortcomings can be made in the
following.
1. In modeling the processes, the networks are utilized
like a transfer function which just maps the input data
into the output variables. The fitfall of this is that this
method is just a black box approach, since the
networks do not know what are going on with regard
to physical phenomenon of the processes.
2. In pattern recognition and clustering, there still
remains a limitation to use the networks. Their
performance here somewhat depends upon statistical
properties of sampled data. Accuracy clustering data
located at the proximity of border lines of each group
still needs to be improved, since most of
manufacturing processes require nearly 100% of
correct judgement.
3. In process control, the networks take roles in
identification and/or generation of control signal based
upon sensors informations. As in other problems, here,
the robustness and accuracy are the key issues to
promote their implementation in real processes.
There are several other shortcomings not listed here, but all
of these may be gradually solved when the networks are
equipped with such functionalities as to accommodate the
manufacturing-specific physical natures by enhancing the
structure, learning algorithm and convergency properties of
the currently used networks. To approach and solve this,
understanding the characteristics of the manufacturing
processes first and then designing of appropriate networks
may be a desirable procedure, but not vice-versa, which is
currently being adopted for solution
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Table 1. Operatin2 Parameters and Product Quality in

Various Manufacturin2 Processes

Process Operating Parameters Product Quality I Defect

Arc welding welding current / voltage weld pool size, void
wire feedrate, torch speed
Spot welding welding power weld strength, nugget size
holding pressure explosion
Metal fonning punch stroke, punch speed product geometrical dimension
surface wrinkling, fracture, necking
Metal cutting feedrate, cutting speed machining dimension
surface roughness
Hydrofonning hydraulic fonning pressure product geometrical dimension
punch stroke surface wrinkling, rupture, necking
EDM gap voltage, pulse width surface roughness
gap current dimensional accuracy
Ring rolling pressure roll feedrate ring dimension
conical roll feedrate surface quality
Laser heat treatment laser power, torch speed surface hardening, depth
Injection molding ram speed vs. stroke molecular orientation
temperature short size, product geometry
Assembly process multi-axis positioning jamming, part damage
and orientation
Semiconductor chamber pressure, RF power etching accuracy, etching time
fabrication electrode spacing
Stereolithography layer thickness, hatch spacing distortion
process (RP) hatch overcure part dimensional inaccuracy
Clinching holding force joining strength

535
 Table 2 Types of sensor signals and neural networks
in manufacturing applications

Process Sensor signal Network Quality variable

Drilling acoustic wave unsupervised Gaussian drill wear

acoustic wave fuzzy neural network drill wear

force ART(2) dri11 chatter
force Kohonen drill wear
force perceptron drill wear
torque, vibration adaptive feedforward drill wear, tool failure
Turning vibration force Kohonen tool wear
force perceptron surface finish
acoustic emission perceptron chip form
tool force perceptron cutting tool wear
force accelerometer perceptron cutting tool wear
force perceptron tool breakage
force radial basis function tool wear
force perceptron tool wear
vision perceptron tool wear
vibration force perceptron tool wear
acoustic wave force perceptron tool wear
force ART(2) tool life
diffraction image Kohonen surface finish
temperature at machine perceptron positioning error of the
locations machine tool
feed, force perceptron tool wear
cutting velocity
feedrate perceptron tool life
cutting depth
vibration ART(I) cutter status
acoustic emission
Grinding image perceptron surface finish
wheel velocity perceptron grinding bum
grinding depth
Milling acoustic wave perceptron surface roughness bore
spindle vibration tolerance
cutting force
Spot welding welding current perceptron failure load
weld resistance perceptron weld nugget geometry
Arc welding weld voltage,current perceptron torch position
weld current perceptron weld pool geometry
acoustic wave perceptron acceptability of weld
temperature perceptron weld pool geometry
vision image perceptron weld pool geometry
welding current perceptron weld pool geometry
arc voltage
Pipe welding optical image Kohonen weld pool geometry
le fabrication chamber pressure perceptron plasma etching
fault detection
chamber pressure perceptron etch rate
flow rate
chamber pressure recurrent network etch rate
delivered power dc bias voltage
etch thickness perceptron (gas flow)
fault diagnosis
etch depth perceptron etch time
gas flow rate
chamber pressure
dc bias perceptron oxide thickness
reflected RF power

536
 Manufaduring Feature
Process Extraction

(optimization )
(sef-organiZing) (pattern recognition)
(object recogn'ion)~~
(signal proceSSing)
Fig. 2 Feature-based monitoring and control with
artificial neural networks

deS~.~ ~. !

estiRWted qually

Fig. 1 Neural networks generated functionalities and <a) dtea feedback

their applications in manufacturing
desAd produd
qually

(b) indireCt feedback

Fig. 3 Comparison of direct and indirect quality control

methodologies

537