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Real-time pattern recognition in statistical process control: A hybrid neural network/decision

tree-based approach
Ruey-Shiang Guh
Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part B: Journal of Engineering Manufacture 2005 219:
283
DOI: 10.1243/095440505X28963

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 283

Real-time pattern recognition in

statistical process control: a hybrid neural
network/decision tree-based approach
Ruey-Shiang Guh
Department of Industrial Management, National Formosa University, Huwei, Yunlin 632, Taiwan, Republic of China

The manuscript was received on 16 June 2004 and was accepted after revision for publication on 13 January 2005.

DOI: 10.1243/095440505X28963

Abstract: Pattern recognition is an important issue in statistical process control because

unnatural patterns displayed by control charts can be associated with specific causes that
adversely impact on the manufacturing process. A common problem of existing approaches to
control chart pattern (CCP) recognition is false classification between different types of CCP
that share similar features in a real-time process-monitoring scenario, in which only limited
pattern points are available for recognition. This study proposes a hybrid learning-based
system that integrates neural networks and decision tree learning to overcome the
classification problem in a real-time CCP recognition scheme. This hybrid system consists of
three sequential modules, namely feature extraction, coarse classification, and fine
classification. The coarse-classification model employs a four-layer back propagation network
to detect and classify unnatural CCPs. The fine-classification module contains four decision
trees used in a simple heuristic algorithm for further classifying the detected CCPs. Simulation
experiments demonstrate that the false recognition problem has been effectively addressed by
the proposed hybrid system. Compared with conventional control chart approaches, the
proposed system has better performance in terms of recognition speed and also can
accurately identify the type of unnatural CCP. Although a real-time CCP recognizer for the
individual’s (X) chart is the specific application presented here, the proposed hybrid
methodology based on neural networks and decision trees can be applied to other control charts.

Keywords: statistical process control, neural networks, decision trees, pattern recognition,
control charts

1 INTRODUCTION effective recognition of unnatural patterns in control

Statistical process control (SPC) is extremely useful in
maintaining process stability by providing a meth-
odology for measuring process capability and perfor-
mance. Control charting is the key part of SPC
implementation. The power of a control chart lies in
its ability to separate out special disturbances (out-
of-control data) from inherent variability (in-control
data) in the process. However, a traditional control
chart with a control limit can indicate only when to
seek a disturbance. A traditional control chart
cannot directly indicate where and what to look for.
Unnatural patterns in control charts can be asso-
ciated with a specific set of causes, giving the avail-
ability of appropriate process knowledge. Hence,
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charts can significantly narrow the set of possible
causes to be investigated and markedly accelerate
the diagnostic search. Consequently, the recognition
of unnatural control chart patterns (CCPs) is a critical
and complementary tool to the control chart limits
(e.g.
3
) used in control charts.
is the process
standard deviation. Figure 1 illustrates some typical
CCPs.
Traditional methods (e.g. visual judgement of
human expert, zone tests or run rules, and expert sys-
tems) have been demonstrated to be not especially
useful for CCP recognition [1, 2]. Recently, neural net-
works (NNs) have been successfully applied to detect
and analyse CCPs [2–9]. Pertinent literature demon-
strates that NNs outperform other more traditional

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284
Fig. 1
techniques. For example, Cheng [3] demonstrated
that a well-developed NN could perform better than
a combined Shewhart-cumulative sum (CUSUM)
scheme in detecting small to moderate trends or
shifts. Moreover, Ho and Chang [7] used a neural
fuzzy approach to monitor process mean and vari-
ance changes simultaneously. A comparative study
demonstrated that the proposed NN control scheme
outperforms other SPC charts in most situations for
both individual measurements and a subgroup
sample size of five. NN approaches to CCP recogni-
tion have been reported to begin having industrial
applications, and these applications are expected to
increase [10].
Besides the better recognition performance, NN-
based CCP recognizers have two main advantages
over conventional statistics-based approaches for
CCP recognition. Firstly, the robustness of a real-
time SPC scheme to process non-normality is crucial
to its applicability because, according to an empirical
investigation by Alwan and Roberts [11], the
normality assumption is often unsatisfied in practical
situations, particularly when individual observations
are used. The NN-based control-chart-monitoring
model, owing to its excellent noise tolerance, has
been demonstrated still to perform well in a non-
normal distribution environment in terms of
accuracy and speed [2]. On the other hand, most
conventional SPC approaches are relatively sensitive
to the non-normality (especially the skewness).
Secondly, it is relatively easy to add other CCPs (i.e.
new pattern types) or to change the range settings
of CCP parameters in the control scheme by simply
adding or modifying the corresponding training
(learning) example sets. This method is considered
more convenient and more flexible than developing
new analytical approaches for different types of CCP.
Hence, NNs can be concluded to offer excellent
capabilities as a tool in recognizing and analysing
CCPs. However, NN approaches in CCP recognition
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Proc. IMechE Vol. 219 Part B: J. Engineering Manufacture
Ruey-Shiang Guh
Some typical types of CCP
were reported to suffer from a false recognition
problem (i.e. the patterns are misclassified), which is
commonly encountered in real-time CCP recognition
schemes [5, 8].
The false recognition problem results mainly from
the inherent common cause variation that could
make a shift in the process appear to be a trend, or
a trend to be a shift. This issue becomes serious
when the CCP recognition is being conducted in a
real-time mode. In a real-time process-monitoring
scenario, only limited CCP points are available for
analysis when an unnatural CCP is just detected by
the CCP recognizer. Figure 2 illustrates the recogni-
tion procedure of a downward shift pattern. Notably,
owing to the natural process fluctuation, the feature
of the downward shift pattern within the recognition
window resembles that of a downward trend pattern.
In fact, owing to underlying random process varia-
tion, the shift, trend, cycle, and mixture patterns all
share very similar features during the beginning seg-
ments of the patterns. The cost or impact of false
recognition increases when a subsequent search is
conducted to determine the cause(s). Consequently,
the corrective action for a trend could be incorrectly
applied to a shift, or vice versa. For example, a trend
resulting from loose fittings could be incorrectly
Fig. 2 Real-time recognition of a downward shift pattern
B10304 # IMechE 2005
 Real-time pattern recognition in statistical process control
identified as a shift, which may result from a tool
breakage. The remedy adopted for a shift then
might be to replace an expensive part, whereas a
simple adjustment is sufficient to fix the problem.
If the random variation in the manufacturing
process data is also regarded as a type of CCP (i.e. a
natural CCP), the task of CCP recognition can be
essentially considered as a classification problem. In
this study, this line of thought leads to a novel appli-
cation of decision tree (DT) learning for the CCP
recognition problem, because DT learning is one of
the most widespread classification approaches in
the field of machine learning [12]. The decision-
making processing of an NN generally is difficult to
understand. In comparison, a DT classifier has the
advantages of conceptual simplicity and computa-
tional efficiency. Besides NN, this research employed
DT learning to develop a hybrid system capable of
solving the classification problem in a real-time CCP
recognition scheme. This hybrid system is designed
to be applied to an automated manufacturing process
where process data are collected automatically and
monitored with a computer-based pattern recogni-
tion system, without requiring human intervention.
Simulation results indicate that the proposed
system can perform efficiently in real-time CCP
recognition and maintains good pattern classification
capability.
The rest of this paper is divided into four additional
sections. Section 2 proposes a hybrid system for real-
time CCP recognition and details the algorithm for
CCP classification. Section 3 then describes the per-
formance evaluation procedure. Evaluation results
are presented in section 4, together with empirical
comparisons of the proposed hybrid system and
several conventional control chart approaches. This
paper is concluded in section 5.
2 HYBRID NN/DT-BASED SYSTEM FOR
REAL-TIME CCP RECOGNITION
Owing to the wide adoption of automatic data collec-
tion and inspection technologies in the modern
manufacturing industry, the X chart (individual’s
chart), which plots the individual measurement
values rather than the averages of subgroups, recently
has attracted increasing attention from SPC practi-
tioners. Although the X chart signals false alarms
(identifying an unnatural CCP when the process
only exhibits common-cause variation), more fre-
quently it can identify the out-of-control situation
more quickly than other types of control chart. In a
high-speed automatic production scenario, detecting
and correcting the incipient problem as early as
possible are important for avoiding the creation of
additional defective products. Consequently, the X
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285
chart is the major chart considered in this research.
Eight typical types of CCP (see Fig. 1) can exist in an
X chart [13]. The generation of CCP examples used
in this study is detailed in the Appendix.
Before the hybrid CCP recognition system is
described, three research assumptions should be
emphasized.
1. Only univariate quality characteristics are used.
2. Only one CCP exists at any given time.
3. The common-cause standard deviation (
) is kept
constant.
Although assumption 3 must be recognized as a
significant simplifying assumption, it provides a
close approximation to many types of practical man-
ufacture. The factors that cause changes in process
standard deviation tend to be long term compared
with the length of the production cycle between
resetting events.
2.1 System architecture
For CCP recognition, a system can be developed and
trained either as a general-purpose system capable of
recognizing various different types of unnatural CCP,
or as a special-purpose system capable of recognizing
only a specific type of unnatural CCP. An appro-
priately designed special-purpose system should be
more effective than a general-purpose system in
analysing a specific type of CCP [14]. However, it is
common for numerous different unnatural CCPs to
appear in a manufacturing process separately or
together. Note that this research focused on the
identification of single patterns only. For mixed
patterns, interested readers are referred to a study
[8] that applied NNs to detect mixed (concurrent)
patterns where at least two patterns coexist and
may be associated with different causes.
The hybrid intelligent classification system consists
of three sequential modules (Fig. 3), namely module A
(data preprocessing for feature extraction), module B
(coarse classification), and module C (fine classifica-
tion). Module B functions as a general-purpose CCP
detector and classifier. This module classifies the
detected CCPs into four CCP subsets: {natural},
{upward shift, downward shift, upward trend, down-
ward trend}, {cycle}, and {systematic, mixture}. Once
the input data are processed in module A and then
analysed in module B, they are classified into one of
the four CCP subsets. If an unnatural CCP is detected,
the input data are further analysed in module C using
several special-purpose CCP classifiers to determine
the pattern type of the detected CCP. This study
adopts this modular design to tackle the complexity
and mutual interference between CCP types in the
learning process by breaking a complicated recogni-
tion task into several straightforward subtasks that
Proc. IMechE Vol. 219 Part B: J. Engineering Manufacture
286
Fig. 3 Architecture of the hybrid system for real-time CCP
recognition
are then solved sequentially using a simple heuristic
algorithm and several pattern recognizers dedicated
to each subtask.
The back-propagation network (BPN) and the DT
learning were chosen to develop module B and
module C respectively for the following reasons.
Firstly, the BPN has been successfully applied in
many CCP recognition tasks described in the litera-
ture [6]. Although the training of BPN-based systems
tends to be relatively slow, the recall process is fast.
This is acceptable since the main focus of this study
is to design a CCP recognition system that can be
applied in real-time mode but is trained offline.
Secondly, the output values of a BPN are continuous,
generally in [0, 1]. This characteristic can be used to
control the detection sensitivity of the system by
applying a cut-off value () to the output values of
the BPN. The type I error of the proposed system
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Proc. IMechE Vol. 219 Part B: J. Engineering Manufacture
Ruey-Shiang Guh
can be deliberately configured using the cut-off
value and the setting of the recognition window size
(discussed in section 2.3). Type I error is the probabil-
ity of identifying an unnatural CCP when the process
only exhibits common-cause variation. When the
performance of the proposed system is compared
with that of other SPC approaches, configuring the
type I error of the proposed system to a specific
level is necessary to achieve an unbiased and mean-
ingful comparison. A DT-based model cannot address
this necessity. Thirdly, a DT-based model can out-
perform an NN-based model for a dichotomous
classification problem [15], as addressed in module
C of the proposed hybrid system. Additionally, the
learning speed of a DT significantly exceeds that of
an NN.
2.2 Data preprocessing (module A)
Before the data were presented to the module B, two
steps of data preprocessing, namely standardization
and coding, were implemented in module A for CCP
feature extraction. Standardization is a linear trans-
formation process through which the process data
are transformed to a constant range, approximately
[3, þ1], regardless of the values taken by the data
before standardization [16]. This transformation is
necessary because a trained NN or DT can accept
only a certain range of input data. The pattern data
were standardized according to
yt ¼ ðxt  Þ=
ð1Þ
where:
t ¼ time of sampling
xt ¼ sample value at time t and generated using the
process simulator detailed in the Appendix
 ¼ process mean

¼ process standard deviation
yt ¼ value standardized from xt and will follow a
standard normal distribution with a zero
mean and a standard deviation of unity
provided that xt follows a normal distribution
A coding process was implemented following the
standardization to reduce the effect of common-
cause variation (noise) in the input data before pre-
senting the data to the CCP recognizer. The coding
scheme filters the small random variations while
retaining the main features of the data. This scheme
not only facilitates network convergence in NN train-
ing but also produces a smaller DT in DT learning.
In the coding process, the variable range [7:625,
þ7:625] is divided into 61 zones with a width of
0.25, each returning an integer code. Any data falling
above þ7:625 and below 7:625 are coded as þ31
and 31 respectively. Here, a relatively large range
of the coding process [7:625, þ7:625], which is
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 Real-time pattern recognition in statistical process control 287

more than twice the pattern parameter range (
3) applications. This window size can significantly
used in this study, was used to allow for possible influence the performance of the NN-based CCP
large variations due to special causes. The coding recognizer. A small window size typically detects
scheme is summarized as unnatural patterns more quickly and may also
produce a short in-control average run length (ARL),
yt 5 þ 7:625‚ zt ¼ þ31 which is equivalent to a high type I error. ARL repre-
 7:625 þ 0:25ðk  1Þ 4 yt sents the average number of observations required
before an out-of-control signal is generated by the
4 7:625 þ 0:25k‚ zt ¼ 31 þ k chart-monitoring system. A large window size can
yt < 7:625‚ zt ¼ 31 reduce the recognition efficiency by increasing the
ð2Þ time required to detect patterns (i.e. longer out-of-
control ARL, or higher type II error). Type II error is
where the probability of failing to identify an existing
unnatural CCP. A large window size can also cause
zt ¼ value coded from yt the size of the NN to grow quickly. The appropriate
window size here balances the type I and type II
k ¼ 1‚ 2‚ 3‚ . . . ‚ 61
errors. A preliminary investigation was performed to
examine the relationship between window size and
2.3 NN-based CCP recognizer (module B) in-control ARL. A  (cut-off value) was applied to
the outputs of neurons 2 to 8 in the output layer.
The BPN was selected to develop the general-purpose
Any value above  was considered to indicate the
CCP recognizer in module B. In this general-purpose
presence of an unnatural CCP. In the absence of
recognizer, the input layer contains 24 neurons used
unnatural CCPs, a type I error (false alarm) occurred
as input data for 24 consecutive points in a control
when any of the output values from the above
chart. The output layer contains eight neurons used
neurons equalled or exceeded . The results were
as recognition outputs (Table 1). Each output
calculated on the basis of 100 simulation runs for
neuron is used for one of the eight types of CCP
each of the varying window sizes and  settings.
addressed in this study. The outputs of the BPN
From the experimental results, the window size of
were scaled within [0‚ þ1], where 1 indicates that
24, which has an in-control ARL of 366 when
the data are totally fitted to a specific pattern. Two
 ¼ 0:9, was chosen to provide the NN-based recogni-
hidden layers exist, both containing 16 neurons.
zer with a similar in-control ARL to that of a standard
Based on the preliminary experiments, networks
Shewhart chart (3
limits) which has an in-control
with two hidden layers performed better than those
ARL of around 370.
with one hidden layer. Additionally, with the increase
Table 2 lists details of the training examples. There
in the number of hidden neurons, the learning results
were 80 CCP examples generated for each CCP
are also generally improved. However, once the
parameter setting; therefore, both the training
number of hidden neurons exceeds 16, learning
and the test example sets contained 5540
does not improve and the total training time
ð¼80  9  7 þ 500Þ CCP examples generated with
increases. This agrees with the results of Cheng [5]
different random seeds. These pattern parameters
that, given sufficient number of hidden neurons, the
were selected so that the simulated CCPs occur
addition of more neurons has little effect on the
mainly within the range of
3
from the process
recognition capability.
mean, because an important reason for using CCP
The number of neurons in the input layer is termed
recognition is to identify CCPs before the data
the size of the ‘recognition window’ in real-time SPC
points breach the Shewhart control limits. To enable
faster detection of a large process deviation, some
Table 1 Output types of NN-based CCP recognizer shift and trend pattern examples were generated
that included both in-control and out-of-control
Type for the following outputs points. For shift patterns, the pattern commenced at
point 20 for large displacement of the mean
Pattern 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
ðd 5 2:25
or d 4 2:25
Þ in the recognition
Natural 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 window. Furthermore, for d 4 2:00
or d 5 2:00
,
Upward shift 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 the starting point was set in the middle of the
Downward shift 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
Upward trend 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 recognition window (point 13). For trend patterns,
Downward trend 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 the starting point was set at point 6 for trends with
Cycle 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 larger slopes ðs 5 0:20
or s 4 0:20
Þ. For s 4 0:18

Systematic 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
Mixture 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 or s 5 0:18
, the starting point was set at the
beginning of the recognition window (point 1).
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B10304 # IMechE 2005 Proc. IMechE Vol. 219 Part B: J. Engineering Manufacture
288
Table 2

Pattern type Parameter range
Natural
Upward shift d ¼ ð1:0‚ 3:0‚ 0:25Þ
Downward shift d ¼ ð3:0‚ 1:0‚ 0:25Þ
Upward trend s ¼ ð0:10‚ 0:26‚ 0:02Þ
Downward trend s ¼ ð0:26‚ 0:10‚ 0:02Þ
Cycle l ¼ ð1:0‚ 3:0‚ 0:25Þ
Systematic g ¼ ð1:0‚ 3:0‚ 0:25Þ
Mixture r ¼ ð1:0‚ 3:0‚ 0:25Þ

The three values in parentheses correspond to the initial value, final value, and increment respectively.
The initial network connection weights were
randomly set between ½0:01‚ þ0:01. Moreover, the
learning rate and momentum factors were set at 0.5
and 0.4 respectively. These two parameters were
gradually reduced during the training. Hyperbolic
tangent functions are used as activation functions
for the hidden and output layers. The connection
weights were updated using the delta rule [17], and
the convergence condition was established when
the classification rate (CR) (the number of correctly
identified training examples divided by the total
number of training examples) exceeded 0.95. These
NN training parameters were set based on experience
from previous work [8] in a similar problem domain.
These parameters are not necessarily optimal here.
Because of the possible interactions among the NN
structure and training parameters involved, the tradi-
tional trial-and-error experiments for determining
the ‘best’ NN structure and training parameters
generally take a long time, hindering the application
of the proposed NN-based approach in an online
real-time mode. Interested readers are referred to
the paper by Guh [18], in which the genetic algorithm
is used to ‘evolve’ an NN structure while simulta-
neously determining a training parameter set (includ-
ing learning rate, momentum factor, initial weights
range, activation function, etc.) to obtain efficiently
a near-optimal NN-based CCP recognizer for a
specific SPC application.
The training examples were presented to the
network in a shuffled random order. The networks
converged within ten learning cycles with a final CR
of 0.9720 and a r.m.s. error of 0.0322. The test result
of CR is 0.9628, which indicated that the training
was successful. The NN in this research was devel-
oped using NeuralWorks Professional II Plus [19].
Following the completion of the training and test
procedures, the networks were transformed into the
C program and embedded into the main system for
evaluation and application.
After the network training and test were completed,
a preliminary study of 100 simulation runs for each
pattern parameter setting was conducted to assess
roughly the performance of the BPN-based CCP
recognizer with  ¼ 0:9. The procedure of the
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Proc. IMechE Vol. 219 Part B: J. Engineering Manufacture
Ruey-Shiang Guh
Details of training example CCPs
Description Quantity
Normal distribution,  ¼ 0,
¼ 1 500
Displacement from the process mean 720
Displacement from the process mean 720
Slope 720
Slope 720
Amplitude 720
Magnitude of process fluctuation 720
Magnitude of process fluctuation 720
performance evaluation will be detailed in section 3.
The aggregate CRs for upward shifts, downward
shifts, upward trends, downward trends, cycles,
systematics, and mixtures were 94.6 per cent, 87.4
per cent, 0.3 per cent, 1.2 per cent, 78.8 per cent,
65.6 per cent, and 81.3 per cent respectively. These
significantly variable results indicate that trends
were only rarely correctly classified. The major prob-
lems occurred when upward trends were incorrectly
classified as upward shifts. Similarly, incorrect identi-
fication occurred for downward trends as downward
shifts. Moreover, some of the upward shifts, down-
ward shifts, upward trends, and downward trends
were incorrectly identified as cycles. With the
presence of cycle patterns, most false alarms were
shifts, and less frequently trends. Most false alarms
for systematics were mixtures, and less frequently
cycles. Finally, most false alarms for mixtures were
systematics, and less frequently cycles.
The very poor recognition accuracy for some pat-
terns was believed to result from the feature similarity
of different patterns within the limited pattern points
available for recognition in a real-time process-mon-
itoring scenario. The average network output values
from each unnatural output neuron (neurons 2 to 8)
for the first 24 moving recognition windows are
shown in Fig. 4. In Fig. 4(a), regarding recognition of
upward shift, the average output values from the
upward shift neuron reach  at around the fifth recog-
nition window, significantly earlier than the sixteenth
window at which average output values from the
upward trend neuron reach . This observation can
explain the high percentage of correct classification
for the upward shift pattern. For upward trend recog-
nition (Fig. 4(c)), the average output values from the
upward trend neuron reach  at around the four-
teenth recognition window. However, owing to the
feature similarity between shifts and trends, the aver-
age output values from the upward shift neuron reach
 much earlier – at the ninth window. This phenom-
enon implies that the network will always signal an
upward shift alarm first, despite the fact that the
unnatural CCP is an upward trend. This observation
could explain the very poor recognition accuracy
(0.3 per cent) for the upward trend pattern. A similar
B10304 # IMechE 2005
 Real-time pattern recognition in statistical process control
Fig. 4 Average output values of the NN-based CCP recog-
nizer for the first 24 moving recognition windows
discussion can be applied to the recognition results of
downward shift and downward trend patterns (Figs
4(b) and 4(d)).
The initial results using only the BPN-based
recognizer demonstrate that, for real-time CCP recog-
nition, the general-purpose recognizer alone per-
formed poorly in pattern discrimination. This kind
of false recognition problem is considered unavoid-
able in this field of research because CCPs are gener-
ally distorted by the common-cause variations
natural to the process [5, 8, 20]. Such false recognition
problems could be treated as a quality engineer
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B10304 # IMechE 2005
289
viewing a control chart might do, by simply taking
more observations. Based on this idea, a heuristic
algorithm for CCP classification and several special-
purpose DT classifiers was designed to address the
false recognition problem.
2.4 Decision tree-based CCP classifier (module C)
Using the DT learning approach to build knowledge-
based systems from training data has been success-
fully demonstrated in various practical applications
[21]. The advantage of this classification algorithm
lies in its simplicity and efficiency, its ability to
handle non-homogeneous and non-linearly separ-
able cases, its robustness with respect to outliers
and misclassified points, and the ease of understand-
ing and interpretation regarding the data structure.
Most of these advantages cannot be achieved using
traditional classification techniques such as linear
discrimination analysis or the k-nearest-neighbour
method. Implementations of DT algorithms are now
commercially available on numerous computer
platforms.
The See5 DT learning tool (http://www.rulequest.
com/see5-win.html), which is the C4.5 [22] subse-
quent Windows version, was applied in this study
for building DTs for CCP classification. C4.5 is the
fastest DT learning algorithm in an empirical com-
parison [15], in which the training speeds of 22 DT
learning algorithms were compared. See5 also
includes a function for converting a DT to a set of
production rules. The resulting classifiers were
linked to the main system for evaluation and applica-
tion purposes using a C source code provided by See5.
Figure 5 shows the heuristic algorithm for further
classification of the CCP type in module C. The logic
of this procedure was derived from scrutiny of the
output values from the output neurons of the NN-
based CCP recognizer for different patterns (see
Fig. 4). The algorithm, which employs four DT classi-
fiers specially developed with different learning
example sets for specific tasks, is detailed below,
based on the initial alarm type (shift or trend pattern;
cycle pattern; systematic or mixture pattern) signalled
by the NN-based CCP recognizer (module B).
2.4.1 Shift or trend pattern
If the initial alarm type is a shift or a trend, the recog-
nition window is moved forwards five points. The
system thus waits for five more sample data points
from the process. This motion is designed to solve
the misclassification problem, which results from
pattern similarity in the limited points available for
analysis immediately after the pattern detection.
The more pattern points are included in the recogni-
tion window, the more pattern features can be
exposed to the pattern recognizer, and thus the
Proc. IMechE Vol. 219 Part B: J. Engineering Manufacture
290
Fig. 5 The heuristic algorithm for fine classification of CCP type
more accurate the recognition will be. Ideally, waiting
for 24 points (i.e. the size of the recognition window in
this research) will guarantee that a full unnatural
pattern is presented to the recognizer. However, one
of the main goals of the CCP recognition scheme is
to detect and classify patterns as quickly as possible.
‘Five points’ is the minimum number for obtaining
satisfactory results here. This empirical rule can be
extracted from close examination of the network
outputs for the first 24 moving recognition windows
(Fig. 4) and further proved by the experimental
results.
The new process window is then analysed by the
NN-based CCP recognizer again. If the output value
from the cycle neuron exceeds 0.2, the occurrence
of an unnatural pattern is concluded to be a cycle;
otherwise it is confirmed to be a shift or a trend.
This step was included because some cycles may be
falsely identified as shifts or trends because they
possess features similar to those of shifts or trends
in the earlier portion of a cycle pattern. In situations
where the pattern presented is a shift or trend, the
output from the cycle neuron should be a very low
value (close to zero) after five further points have
been included in the recognition window. Therefore,
if the output value from the cycle neuron is not very
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Ruey-Shiang Guh
low (e.g. 0.3), sufficient evidence exists that the
pattern is actually a cycle. The choice of a relatively
low threshold value here is based on the considera-
tion that the output from the cycle neuron presently
may not be very high (close to 1.0) because only
about half of the recognition window consists of
cycle pattern at this stage. The probability of recog-
nizing the cycle pattern increases with reducing
threshold value used (producing a lower type II
error). However, the type I error tends to increase. A
threshold value of 0.2 is an appropriate value herein
for satisfactorily balancing type I and type II errors.
Notably, the threshold value ‘0.2’ used here is
simply an empirical setting and is not necessarily
optimal.
If the unnatural pattern is an upward shift or trend,
the process window is analysed using a DT-based
classifier. The DT-based approach here views each
observation in the monitoring window as a real-
valued attribute of an ongoing manufacturing
process. Based on these attributes, the DT can classify
the CCP type. This classifier (DT classifier 1) is
dedicated to classifying upward shift and upward
trend. There were 2700 shift patterns and 2700 trend
patterns generated in the learning and test data sets
for DT classifier 1. The 24 attributes in the data set
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 Real-time pattern recognition in statistical process control
Fig. 6 Example of a cycle pattern classified using the algorithm of fine classification in module C
(i.e. the 24 consecutive points in a control chart) were
labelled X1, X2, . . . , X24. With the m parameter (the
minimum number of instances represented by a
node) and c parameter (the confidence level of prun-
ing) set to 4 and 10 respectively, See5 obtained a DT
with a classification accuracy (CR) of 92.3 per cent
on the test example set. The See5 rule induction
program then was applied to produce a rule set (pro-
duction rules) with an accuracy of 94.5 per cent. The
tree size (the number of leaves in the tree) was 86,
while the number of rules was 62. The rule set gener-
ated from the DT in this study is more accurate and
smaller than the DT. Previous studies [23] have
stated that a collection of classification rules can be
expected to produce more accurate classification of
cases that were not in the training set. Using the
rule set, rather than the tree, may lead to the building
of more reliable but smaller systems. Two examples of
rules are
Rule 13: (165/11, lift 6.6)
X23 > 4 X19 > 0 X20 > 1 X15 < 4 X16 < 3
X24 > 2 ! class ‘US’ [0.933]
Rule 45: (157/9, lift 6.6)
X15 ( 8 X19 > 5 X21 > 13 X12 > 1
! class ‘UT’ [0.937]
A value between 0 and 1 (in the square brackets) indi-
cates the confidence (accuracy) with which this rule is
made. The dichotomous DT-based CCP classifier per-
formed better than the NN-based CCP classifier in
this study. A BPN, which was trained using the same
training example set as the DT classifier 1, achieved
a test result of 85.6 per cent. The building process of
DT classifier 2, designed for the situation in which
the initial alarm indicates downward patterns (shift
or trend), is similar to that of DT classifier 1.
2.4.2 Cycle pattern
The operations following an initial cycle alarm are
similar to those with an initial shift or trend alarm
described above, because a systematic or mixture
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291
pattern can be falsely recognized as a cycle pattern.
However, after taking five more data points from the
process, if the output values from the systematic,
mixture, and cycle neurons are all smaller than 0.2,
the pattern can be a shift or a trend that is falsely
identified as a cycle. In this occasion, both upward
and downward patterns (shift and trend) can be
falsely identified as a cycle, therefore another
special-purpose classifier (DT classifier 3), which
aims to classify between upward patterns and down-
ward patterns for shifts and trends, was created to
address this occasion. DT classifier 3 was trained
using 5400 upward patterns and 5400 downward pat-
terns in the training and test sets. Here the upward
patterns included both upward shifts and upward
trends, while the downward patterns included both
downward shifts and downward trends. The final
test result (CR) was 99.6 per cent.
2.4.3 Systematic or mixture pattern
If the initial alarm type is a systematic or mixture type,
after taking five more observations from the process,
the data window is analysed directly using DT classi-
fier 4 for classifying systematic and mixture patterns.
The DT classifier 4 was trained using 2700 systematic
patterns and 2700 mixture patterns, and the final test
CR was 96.8 per cent.
Figure 6 shows a simple example showing the usage
of this classification algorithm. In Fig. 6, a cycle
(amplitude, 1:75
) initiated at data point 25, is falsely
identified as an upward shift at data point 29. After
waiting for five more data points from the process,
the pattern was correctly classified as a cycle at
point 34 using the procedure described above.
3 PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
Generally, a real-time CCP recognition scheme has
two performance indices: detecting the underlying
pattern as soon as possible, and classifying the type
Proc. IMechE Vol. 219 Part B: J. Engineering Manufacture
292
of the detected pattern as accurately as possible. That
is, shorter ARL and higher pattern classification
capability are the two main goals of real-time CCP
recognition. Besides out-of-control ARL (recognition
speed) and CR (recognition accuracy), the recogni-
tion speed stability (i.e. the standard deviation
of
the run length) is also considered an important
criterion for CCP recognition in this study, because
it is helpful to spot the starting point of the detected
CCP [10]. Therefore, this study employed three
performance indices (CR, out-of-control ARL, and

of the run length) to evaluate the proposed real-
time CCP recognition system.
A moving-window analysis method was used to
evaluate the CCP recognizer in this study. A sequence
of simulated process data was presented to the recog-
nizer in the moving window, which was incremented
forwards by one process measurement, representing
a single sampling interval (see Fig. 2). Additionally,
the performance evaluation approach of this study
assumes that the process begins with an in-control
condition. The initial recognition window contains
no unnatural CCP points. Unnatural CCPs begin to
appear as the recognition window moves along the
time series (the 25th point in the time series). The
pattern features gradually strengthen as the recogni-
tion window moves forwards through the process
data stream. This assumption simulates the scenario
that the proposed system will encounter in a practical
CCP recognition scheme. Although the evaluation
results using this approach are inferior to those with
the commonly used method, which assumes that a
full (complete) pattern is already shown in the recogni-
tion window at the start of the recognition scheme [16,
24, 25], this evaluation approach is considered more
practical because, in a real-time process-monitoring
scheme, an unnatural CCP often occurs after a
period during which the process is in control, and
the starting point of the unnatural CCP is generally
unknown [2, 5]. The performance evaluation pro-
cedure consists of the following steps.
1. Set t (time of sampling) to 24.
2. Take the most recent 24 sample values, xi ,
i ¼ t  23‚ t  22‚ . . . ‚ t  1‚ t, from the process.
3. The input sample values xi , are preprocessed in
module A. Denote the preprocessed values by
zi , i ¼ t  23‚ t  22‚ . . . ‚ t  1‚ t. Form an input
vector V I ½V I ¼ ðzt  23 ‚ zt  22 ‚ . . . ‚ zt  1 ‚ zt Þ at time t].
4. V I is presented to the NN-based CCP recognizer
in module B and an output vector V O ½V O ¼
ðo1 ‚ o2 ‚ o3 ‚ o4 ‚ o5 ‚ o6 ‚ o7 ‚ o8 Þ is generated.
5. If oj ð j ¼ 2–8Þ 5  (cut-off value), conclude that
an unnatural CCP has been detected in the current
recognition window. The process data in the cur-
rent window then are further analysed in module
C for fine classification. Otherwise, increment t
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Ruey-Shiang Guh
by 1, and go to step 2. This procedure is repeated
until an unnatural CCP is detected.
4 EVALUATION RESULTS OF THE PROPOSED
SYSTEM
Owing to the large number of example CCPs required
for assessing the performance of the proposed CCP
recognition system, simulation was also used to
generate the CCPs for performance evaluation. All
the unnatural CCPs began at point 25 in the simu-
lated process data stream. The first 24 data points
were generated using a normal distribution. Because
it was assumed herein that no unnatural pattern
exists in the first recognition window, the first
window was checked for unnatural CCPs before the
start of the recognition process. If the first window
is not free of unnatural CCPs, the simulated process
data are discarded and the next process data stream
is generated. The CR, ARL, and
of the ARL were
calculated on the basis of the results of 10 000 simula-
tion runs for each CCP parameter setting. Notably, the
ARL here was calculated only for the correct recogni-
tions of the actual pattern. Table 3 lists the evaluation
results for each type of CCP.
In Table 3, the numbers in parentheses listed in the
CR column represent the results based on 100 simula-
tion runs conducted in the preliminary study (described
in section 2.3) using only modules A and B. Notably, the
CRs were significantly improved, after introducing the
heuristic algorithm for fine classification in module C.
The overall CR was improved from 57.9 to 94.6 per
cent. For trends, the CRs were significantly improved
from 0 to 93 per cent and from 1 to 92 per cent for the
upward trend and downward trend respectively. The
proposed hybrid system outperforms the BPN-based
CCP recognizer by Cheng [5] in terms of CR. The CRs
of Cheng’s model are 82.3 per cent, 82.3 per cent, 78.9
per cent, 79.0 per cent, 90.0 per cent, 98.9 per cent,
and 71.4 per cent for upward shift, downward shift,
upward trend, downward trend, cycle, systematic, and
mixture patterns respectively (extracted from Table
4(a) of reference [5]). The overall CR is 83.2 per cent. It
should be noted that it might not be appropriate to
compare the performances of these two studies directly,
because the AMPRL (termed in-control ARL in the
present study) of Cheng’s model is 800, which is
longer than the in-control ARL (equal to 366) of the
proposed hybrid system.
The ARL performances of the proposed system were
compared with those of the conventional control
chart approaches described in the literature. Figure 7
compares the ARLs of the combined Shewhart–
CUSUM scheme K ¼ 0:25, H ¼ 8:0, and Shewhart con-
trol limit ðSCLÞ ¼ 4:0 [26], and the proposed hybrid
NN–DT system for both upward shift and downward
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Table 3 Evaluation results of the proposed hybrid CCP recognizer

Upward shift d CR (%) Out-of-control ARL
of run length

1.00
82 (90) 7.3 2.7

1.25
90 (94) 6.6 2.6
1.50
95 (94) 5.5 2.1
1.75
95 (95) 4.8 1.4
2.00
96 (96) 4.7 1.3
2.25
97 (94) 4.7 1.1
2.50
97 (91) 4.6 0.9
2.75
98 (99) 4.3 0.8
3.00
99 (98) 4.3 0.6
Aggregate 94 (95) 5.2 1.5

Downward shift d CR (%) Out-of-control ARL
of run length

1.00
88 (86) 9.0 2.2

1.25
92 (86) 7.6 2.0
1.50
93 (80) 6.7 1.6
1.75
93 (86) 6.3 1.3
2.00
96 (90) 6.3 1.2
2.25
97 (90) 6.0 1.0
2.50
98 (90) 6.1 0.9
2.75
98 (91) 6.0 0.9
3.00
99 (88) 6.0 0.8
Aggregate 95 (87) 6.7 1.3

Upward trend slope s CR (%) Out-of-control ARL
of run length

0.10
91 (0) 10.2 1.9

0.12
97 (0) 9.9 1.4
0.14
86 (0) 9.8 1.2
0.16
85 (0) 9.3 1.2
0.18
91 (0) 9.0 1.1
0.20
95 (0) 9.1 1.0
0.22
95 (1) 8.8 0.9
0.24
99 (1) 8.6 0.7
0.26
94 (1) 8.5 0.7
Aggregate 93 (0) 9.2 1.1

Downward trend slope s CR (%) Out-of-control ARL
of run length

0.10
82 (0) 9.6 1.5

0.12
84 (0) 9.4 1.5
0.14
86 (2) 9.3 1.4
0.16
90 (0) 9.0 1.2
0.18
94 (2) 9.0 1.2
0.20
95 (1) 9.0 0.9
0.22
98 (1) 8.7 0.8
0.24
99 (2) 8.6 0.7
0.26
100 (3) 8.6 0.6
Aggregate 92 (1) 9.0 1.1

Cycle amplitude l CR (%) Out-of-control ARL
of run length

1.00
81 (88) 12.8 3.4

1.25
88 (85) 12.1 2.4
1.50
96 (92) 11.5 1.9
1.75
98 (85) 11.2 2.1
2.00
98 (80) 10.8 1.4
2.25
99 (75) 10.9 1.4
2.50
99 (75) 10.6 1.2
2.75
99 (76) 10.6 0.9
3.00
100 (53) 10.5 0.8
Aggregate 95 (79) 11.2 1.7

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294 Ruey-Shiang Guh

Table 3 Continued

Systematic magnitude g CR (%) Out-of-control ARL
of run length

1.00
88 (70) 10.9 2.8

1.25
93 (73) 10.3 1.6
1.50
95 (64) 10.0 1.7
1.75
95 (62) 9.8 1.4
2.00
96 (61) 9.6 1.1
2.25
96 (63) 9.6 0.8
2.50
98 (66) 9.5 0.8
2.75
99 (69) 9.4 0.7
3.00
100 (62) 9.4 0.4
Aggregate 96 (66) 9.8 1.3

Mixture r CR (%) Out-of-control ARL
of run length

1.00
93 (87) 11.5 4.3

1.25
94 (90) 10.8 1.8
1.50
94 (80) 10.5 1.4
1.75
96 (78) 10.2 1.6
2.00
97 (77) 10.1 0.9
2.25
99 (78) 9.9 0.8
2.50
99 (81) 9.8 0.8
2.75
100 (84) 9.8 0.5
3.00
100 (77) 9.7 0.3
Aggregate 97 (81) 10.3 1.4

Fig. 7 Comparison of ARLs between the two-sided Shewhart–CUSUM chart, with K ¼ 0:25, H ¼ 8:0,
and SCL ¼ 4:0 [26], and the proposed hybrid NN–DT system for shift patterns

shift detection. The combined Shewhart–CUSUM
scheme is an improved control chart scheme that
attempts to detect both large and small process mean
changes simultaneously. For the comparison to be
unbiased, the type I errors (expressed as in-control
ARL) of both control schemes were kept roughly the
same. The in-control ARLs of the Shewhart–CUSUM
scheme and the proposed system are 361 and 366
respectively. The proposed hybrid system has better
performance than the combined Shewhart–CUSUM
scheme when detecting upward and downward shift
patterns, except for cases involving a large mean
displacement ðd ¼ 3:00
Þ. This comparison implies
that the proposed system is better able to detect small
and moderate shifts than the combined Shewhart–
CUSUM scheme with K ¼ 0:25, H ¼ 8:0, and
SCL ¼ 4:0. Notably, the proposed system also
provides the pattern classification capability that the
combined Shewhart–CUSUM scheme cannot handle.
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Figure 8 compares the optimal CUSUM charts [27]
and the proposed hybrid system in terms of their
ability to detect trends. The values of K and H for
each CUSUM chart were optimally set to the corre-
sponding trend slope s to optimize the results (i.e.
shortest out-of-control ARLs). The in-control ARL of
the optimal CUSUM chart is 350. Figure 8 shows
that the proposed system outperforms the optimal
CUSUM charts for upward and downward trends,
except when the slope s ¼ 0:20
. Again, the proposed
system possesses the ability to classify patterns when
an out-of-control alarm is signalled.
Figures 9 and 10 compare the proposed hybrid
system with a pattern recognition algorithm
proposed by Cheng and Hubele [20] for detecting
cycle and systematic patterns. This algorithm was
based on traditional methods, for example statistical
and syntactic approaches, modified for CCP recog-
nition. Figure 9 demonstrates that the proposed

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 Real-time pattern recognition in statistical process control 295

Fig. 8 Comparison of ARLs between the optimal CUSUM charts [27], and the proposed hybrid system
for trend patterns

Fig. 9 Comparison of ARLs between a modified pattern recognition algorithm [20], and the proposed
hybrid system for cycle patterns with period of 8

system outperforms this algorithm, with a threshold
equal to 0.3, for detecting the cycles with a period
of 8, particularly for the cycles with a small amplitude
ð1:00
4 l 4 1:50
Þ. Figure 10 shows that the
proposed system performs better than this algo-
rithm, with a threshold of 0.3, for the systematic
patterns.
5 ILLUSTRATED EXAMPLE OF THE PROPOSED
HYBRID SYSTEM
The data of a white millbase dispersion process in an
automotive paint plant [28] are used to illustrate the
operation of the proposed hybrid system. The white
millbase is used in the manufacture of topcoats. The
quality characteristic under control in this example
is the weight (pounds) per gallon of each batch. The
weight of 60 consecutive batches of the millbase is
displayed in Fig. 11. The in-control mean and stan-
dard deviation of the process are 14.311 and 0.261
respectively. The upper specification limit and lower
specification limit are 15.3289 and 13.2931 respec-
tively. The upper control limit and lower control
limit ð
3
Þ are calculated as 15.094 and 13.528
respectively. Because of an assignable cause (a new
control method), the process mean shifted to 13.77
(displacement of the mean equal to 2:07
) at

Fig. 10 Comparison of ARLs between a modified pattern recognition algorithm [20], and the proposed
hybrid system for systematic patterns

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296 Ruey-Shiang Guh

Fig. 11 Control chart data: a sequence of 60 consecutive weight measurements of white millbase in a
millbase dispersion process [28] (UCL, upper control limit; LCL, lower control limit)

sample 31. For the purpose of illustration, these
process data are stored in a file and presented to
the proposed model during the illustrative procedure.
Note that, in a practical application, the process data
would be input in real time via a data acquisition
system.
In the beginning of the recognition process,
samples 1 to 24 are input in the recognition
window, preprocessed by module A, and analysed
by module B (NN-based CCP recognizer) of the
proposed system. Then samples 2 to 25 are input in
the recognition window for analysis, and so on. This
moving window recognition scheme continues until
an out-of-control condition (unnatural CCP) is
detected. The output values from the eight output
neurons of the recognizer network are shown in
Table 4.
Module B of the proposed system detects an un-
natural CCP at sample 35 with samples 12 to 35 in
the recognition window (see Table 4). It can be seen
in Table 4 that the output value from the downward
shift neuron (indicated in bold) is 0.9177. It is greater
than the threshold value (0.9). Then the system
further identifies the type of this unnatural CCP
using the fine-classification algorithm in module C.
After the recognition window moves forwards by
five samples, the output value of the cycle neuron
(indicated in bold in Table 4) is 0.0596 for the
window of samples 17 to 40. This confirms that the
detected unnatural CCP is a downward shift or a
downward trend. Then this CCP is classified as a
downward shift by DT classifier 2 that is dedicated
to the discrimination between downward shift and
downward trend.

Table 4 Output values from the recognizer network (module B)

Extent of recognition Upward Downward Upward Downward Cycle Systematic

window Natural shift shift trend slope trend slope amplitude magnitude Mixture

Samples 1–24 0.3979 0.0563 0.0717 0.0438 0.0381 0.8064 0.0951 0.0282
Samples 2–25 0.0896 0.0225 0.0067 0.0659 0.0316 0.8820 0.0833 0.0258
Samples 3–26 0.9279 0.0126 0.0665 0.0561 0.0211 0.1298 0.0330 0.0131
Samples 4–27 0.9434 0.0160 0.0099 0.0084 0.0282 0.0773 0.0190 0.0246
Samples 5–28 0.9459 0.0192 0.0130 0.0034 0.0274 0.0676 0.0185 0.0175
Samples 6–29 0.9537 0.0299 0.0261 0.0261 0.0510 0.0497 0.0428 0.0329
Samples 7–30 0.9499 0.0170 0.0131 0.0020 0.0212 0.0645 0.0212 0.0283
Samples 8–31 0.9506 0.0166 0.0128 0.0016 0.0260 0.0639 0.0216 0.0264
Samples 9–32 0.9468 0.0189 0.0125 0.0040 0.0276 0.0665 0.0181 0.0151
Samples 10–33 0.8029 0.0698 0.0017 0.0132 0.0258 0.2169 0.0394 0.0091
Samples 11–34 0.8136 0.0590 0.0026 0.0042 0.0333 0.2285 0.0290 0.0037
Samples 12–35 0.0334 0.0201 0.9177 0.0176 0.0174 0.0086 0.0431 0.0245
Samples 13–36 0.0314 0.0517 0.9484 0.0080 0.0071 0.0136 0.0539 0.0182
Samples 14–37 0.0153 0.0149 0.9805 0.0266 0.0276 0.0034 0.0115 0.0146
Samples 15–38 0.0153 0.0150 0.9805 0.0266 0.0276 0.0035 0.0116 0.0115
Samples 16–39 0.0153 0.0150 0.9805 0.0266 0.0275 0.0035 0.0116 0.0264
Samples 17–40 0.0183 0.0571 0.7148 0.0340 0.2724 0.0596 0.0090 0.0365

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 Real-time pattern recognition in statistical process control
6 CONCLUSIONS
An important issue frequently encountered in
existing online CCP recognition approaches is false
recognition (incorrect classification) between some
CCPs. Besides the inherent common-cause variation
in the manufacturing process, another reason for
the false recognition problem is that only limited
pattern features are available for recognition immedi-
ately after an alarm is signalled for a pattern. This
study proposes a hybrid NN–DT-based system to
overcome the CCP classification problem in real
time. Evaluation results using simulation demon-
strate that the false recognition problem has been
solved effectively by the proposed hybrid system.
The classification accuracy can be significantly
improved by the empirical pattern classification
algorithm. From the results of performance com-
parisons, the proposed system more efficiently
detects unnatural CCPs than the conventional
approaches do, while also offering the advantage of
accurate CCP classification. This study further
confirms the great potential of machine-learning-
based approaches in online CCP recognition.
Although a real-time CCP recognizer for the X chart
is the specific application presented here, the
proposed machine-learning-based methodology can
be applied to other control charts (e.g. X-bar chart)
because what the proposed systems are seeking
here are just unnatural features that conform to
deterministic equations.
Notably, the application of the proposed CCP
recognition system is not specific to the process
being monitored in any real-world environment.
This capability of generalization arises because the
data standardization, which is applied in module A,
effectively transforms the process data into a range
approximately within ½3‚ þ3. Therefore, as long as
the mean and the standard deviation of the process
are known, the proposed system can recognize eight
types of CCP addressed in this research, provided
that the pattern parameters are within the range of
parameter settings (Table 2) used in the training
(learning) example sets. The mean and standard
deviation of the process can be either estimated
from the initial samples or set by the user. It is possi-
ble to combine the proposed system with an expert
system able to infer the specific causes for the process
variation and then to facilitate the automatic quality
control.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The author would like to thank the National Science
Council, Taiwan, for financially supporting this
research under Grant NSC-93-2213-E-150-014.
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 ¼ cycle period ( ¼ 8 in this research)
Systematic magnitude
APPENDIX dt ¼ g  ð1Þt
In this research, the Monte Carlo simulation where
approach was used to generate the required sets g ¼ magnitude of the systematic pattern in terms
of CCPs for training, test, and evaluation examples of
, determining the fluctuations above or
for several reasons. Firstly, large numbers of below the process mean
example CCPs are needed in the training and test
process. Secondly, simulation can be used to vary Mixture
elaborately the difficulty of the data sets (e.g. the dðt‚pÞ ¼ r  ð1Þh
strength of the pattern feature). Thirdly, the simulated
CCPs are easily reproduced by other researchers. The where
CCP herein is expressed in a general form that p ¼ a random number, 0 < p < 1
consists of the process mean, the common-cause r ¼ magnitude of the mixture pattern in terms of
,
variation, and a special disturbance from specific determining the fluctuations above or below
causes. the process mean
h ¼ 0 if p < rp, 1 if p 5 rp where
rp ¼ prespecified probability value that
Process simulator
determines the switch between
xt ¼  þ nt þ dt distributions and was fixed at 0.5 in this
research

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