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In most data analytic applications in manufacturing, understanding the data‐driven models plays a crucial role in complementing the engineering knowledge about the production process. Identifying relevant input variables, rather than only predicting the response through some "black‐box" model, is of great interest in many applications. There is, therefore, a growing focus on describing the contributions of the input variables to the model in the form of "variable importance", which is readily available in certain machine learning methods such as random forest (RF). Once a ranking based on the importance measure of the variables is established, the question of how many variables are truly relevant in predicting the output variable rises. In this study, we focus on the Boruta algorithm, which is a wrapper around the RF model. It is a variable selection tool that assesses the variable importance measure for the RF model. It has been previously shown in the literature that the correlation among the input variables, which is often a common occurrence in high dimensional data, distorts and overestimates the importance of variables. The Boruta algorithm is also affected by this resulting in a larger set of input variables deemed important. To overcome this issue, in this study, we propose an extension of the Boruta algorithm for the correlated data by exploiting the conditional importance measure. This extension greatly improves the Boruta algorithm in the case of high correlation among variables and provides a more precise ranking of the variables that significantly contribute to the response. We believe this approach can be used in many industrial applications by providing more transparency and understanding of the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many industrial applications, obtaining labeled observations is not straightforward as it often requires the intervention of human experts or the use of expensive testing equipment. In these circumstances, active learning can be highly beneficial in suggesting the most informative data points to be used when fitting a model. Reducing the number of observations needed for model development alleviates both the computational burden required for training and the operational expenses related to labeling. Online active learning, in particular, is useful in high‐volume production processes where the decision about the acquisition of the label for a data point needs to be taken within an extremely short time frame. However, despite the recent efforts to develop online active learning strategies, the behavior of these methods in the presence of outliers has not been thoroughly examined. In this work, we investigate the performance of online active linear regression in contaminated data streams. Our study shows that the currently available query strategies are prone to sample outliers, whose inclusion in the training set eventually degrades the predictive performance of the models. To address this issue, we propose a solution that bounds the search area of a conditional D‐optimal algorithm and uses a robust estimator. Our approach strikes a balance between exploring unseen regions of the input space and protecting against outliers. Through numerical simulations, we show that the proposed method is effective in improving the performance of online active learning in the presence of outliers, thus expanding the potential applications of this powerful tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data‐driven process monitoring and control techniques and their application to industrial chemical processes are gaining popularity due to the current focus on Industry 4.0, digitalization and the Internet of Things. However, for the development of such techniques, there are significant barriers that must be overcome in obtaining sufficiently large and reliable datasets. As a result, the use of real plant and process data in developing and testing data‐driven process monitoring and control tools can be difficult without investing significant efforts in acquiring, treating, and interpreting the data. Therefore, researchers need a tool that effortlessly generates large amounts of realistic and reliable process data without the requirement for additional data treatment or interpretation. In this work, we propose a data generation platform based on the Tennessee Eastman Process simulation benchmark. A graphical user interface (GUI) developed in MATLAB Simulink is presented that enables users to generate massive amounts of data for testing applicability of big data concepts in the realm of process control for continuous time‐dependent processes. An R‐Shiny app that interacts with the data generation tool is also presented for illustration purposes. The app can visualize the results generated by the Tennessee Eastman Process and can carry out a standard fault detection and diagnosis studies based on PCA. The data generator GUI is available free of charge for research purposes at https://github.com/dtuprodana/TEP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concurrent use of statistical process control and engineering process control involves monitoring manipulated and controlled variables. One multivariate control chart may handle the statistical monitoring of all variables, but observing the manipulated and controlled variables in separate control charts may improve understanding of how disturbances and the controller performance affect the process. In this article, we illustrate how step and ramp disturbances manifest themselves in a single‐input–single‐output system by studying their resulting signatures in the controlled and manipulated variables. The system is controlled by variations of the widely used proportional‐integral‐derivative(PID) control scheme. Implications for applying control charts for these scenarios are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a direct consequence of production systems' digitalization, high‐frequency and high‐dimensional data has become more easily available. In terms of data analysis, latent structures‐based methods are often employed when analyzing multivariate and complex data. However, these methods are designed for supervised learning problems when sufficient labeled data are available. Particularly for fast production rates, quality characteristics data tend to be scarcer than available process data generated through multiple sensors and automated data collection schemes. One way to overcome the problem of scarce outputs is to employ semi‐supervised learning methods, which use both labeled and unlabeled data. It has been shown that it is advantageous to use a semi‐supervised approach in case of labeled data and unlabeled data coming from the same distribution. In real applications, there is a chance that unlabeled data contain outliers or even a drift in the process, which will affect the performance of the semi‐supervised methods. The research question addressed in this work is how to detect outliers in the unlabeled data set using the scarce labeled data set. An iterative strategy is proposed using a combined Hotelling's T2 and Q statistics and applied using a semi‐supervised principal component regression (SS‐PCR) approach on both simulated and real data sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The expanding availability of complex data structures requires development of new analysis methods for process understanding and monitoring. In manufacturing, this is primarily due to high‐frequency and high‐dimensional data available through automated data collection schemes and sensors. However, particularly for fast production rate situations, data on the quality characteristics of the process output tend to be scarcer than the available process data. There has been a considerable effort in incorporating latent structure–based methods in the context of complex data. The research question addressed in this paper is to make use of latent structure–based methods in the pursuit of better predictions using all available data including the process data for which there are no corresponding output measurements, ie, unlabeled data. Inspiration for the research question comes from an industrial setting where there is a need for prediction with extremely low tolerances. A semi‐supervised principal component regression method is compared against benchmark latent structure–based methods, principal components regression, and partial least squares, on simulated and experimental data. In the analysis, we show the circumstances in which it becomes more advantageous to use the semi‐supervised principal component regression over these competing methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial manufacturing processes often operate under closed-loop control, where automation aims to keep important process variables at their set-points. In process industries such as pulp, paper, chemical and steel plants, it is often hard to find production processes operating in open loop. Instead, closed-loop control systems will actively attempt to minimize the impact of process disturbances. However, we argue that an implicit assumption in most experimental investigations is that the studied system is open loop, allowing the experimental factors to freely affect the important system responses. This scenario is typically not found in process industries. The purpose of this article is therefore to explore issues of experimental design and analysis in processes operating under closed-loop control and to illustrate how Design of Experiments can help in improving and optimizing such processes. The Tennessee Eastman challenge process simulator is used as a test-bed to highlight two experimental scenarios. The first scenario explores the impact of experimental factors that may be considered as disturbances in the closed-loop system. The second scenario exemplifies a screening design using the set-points of controllers as experimental factors. We provide examples of how to analyze the two scenarios. © 2017 The Authors Quality and Reliability Engineering International Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A basic assumption when using principal component analysis (PCA) for inferential purposes, such as in statistical process control (SPC), is that the data are independent in time. In many industrial processes, frequent sampling and process dynamics make this assumption unrealistic rendering sampled data autocorrelated (serially dependent). PCA can be used to reduce data dimensionality and to simplify multivariate SPC. Although there have been some attempts in the literature to deal with autocorrelated data in PCA, we argue that the impact of autocorrelation on PCA and PCA-based SPC is neither well understood nor properly documented. This article illustrates through simulations the impact of autocorrelation on the descriptive ability of PCA and on the monitoring performance using PCA-based SPC when autocorrelation is ignored. In the simulations, cross-correlated and autocorrelated data are generated using a stationary first-order vector autoregressive model. The results show that the descriptive ability of PCA may be seriously affected by autocorrelation causing a need to incorporate additional principal components to maintain the model's explanatory ability. When all variables have equal coefficients in a diagonal autoregressive coefficient matrix, the descriptive ability is intact, while a significant impact occurs when the variables have different degrees of autocorrelation. We also illustrate that autocorrelation may impact PCA-based SPC and cause lower false alarm rates and delayed shift detection, especially for negative autocorrelation. However, for larger shifts, the impact of autocorrelation seems rather small. © 2015 The Authors. Quality and Reliability Engineering International published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The origins of quality engineering are in manufacturing, where quality engineers apply basic statistical methodologies to improve the quality and productivity of products and processes. In the past decade, people have discovered that these methodologies are effective for improving almost any type of system or process, such as financial, health care, and supply chains. This paper begins with a review of key advances and trends within quality engineering over the past decade. The second part uses the first part as a foundation to outline new application areas for the field. It also discusses how quality engineering needs to evolve in order to make significant contributions to these new areas. © 2015 The Authors Quality and Reliability Engineering International Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the basic assumptions for traditional univariate and multivariate control charts is that the data are independent in time. For the latter, in many cases, the data are serially dependent (autocorrelated) and cross-correlated because of, for example, frequent sampling and process dynamics. It is well known that the autocorrelation affects the false alarm rate and the shift-detection ability of the traditional univariate control charts. However, how the false alarm rate and the shift-detection ability of the Hotelling T² control chart are affected by various autocorrelation and cross-correlation structures for different magnitudes of shifts in the process mean is not fully explored in the literature. In this article, the performance of the Hotelling T² control chart for different shift sizes and various autocorrelation and cross-correlation structures are compared based on the average run length using simulated data. Three different approaches in constructing the Hotelling T² chart are studied for two different estimates of the covariance matrix: (i) ignoring the autocorrelation and using the raw data with theoretical upper control limits; (ii) ignoring the autocorrelation and using the raw data with adjusted control limits calculated through Monte Carlo simulations; and (iii) constructing the control chart for the residuals from a multivariate time series model fitted to the raw data. To limit the complexity, we use a first-order vector autoregressive process and focus mainly on bivariate data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robust parameter design is one of the important tools used in Design for Six Sigma. In this article, we present an application of the generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) approach to robust design and analysis of signal–response systems. We propose a split-plot approach to the signal–response system characterized by two variance components—within-profile variance and between-profile variance. We demonstrate that explicit modeling of variance components using GLMMs leads to more precise point estimates of important model coefficients with shorter confidence intervals. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present a modeling framework for analyzing computer models with two types of variations. The paper is based on a case study of an orthopedic surgical unit, which has both controllable and uncontrollable factors. Our results show that this structure of variation can be modeled effectively with linear mixed effects models and generalized additive models. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inserting estimates for the missing observations from split-plot designs restores their balanced or orthogonal structure and alleviates the difficulties in the statistical analysis. In this article, we extend a method due to Draper and Stoneman to estimate the missing observations from unreplicated two-level factorial and fractional factorial split-plot (FSP and FFSP) designs. The missing observations, which can either be from the same whole plot, from different whole plots, or comprise entire whole plots, are estimated by equating to zero a number of specific contrast columns equal to the number of the missing observations. These estimates are inserted into the design table and the estimates for the remaining effects (or alias chains of effects as the case with FFSP designs) are plotted on two half-normal plots: one for the whole-plot effects and the other for the subplot effects. If the smaller effects do not point at the origin, then different contrast columns to some or all of the initial ones should be discarded and the plots re-examined for bias. Using examples, we show how the method provides estimates for the missing observations that are very close to their actual values. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an increasing use of on-line data acquisition systems in industry. This usually leads to autocorrelated data and implies that the assumption of independent observations has to be re-examined. Most decision procedures for capability analysis assume independent data. In this article we present a new way of performing capability analysis when data are autocorrelated. This method is based on what can be called the ‘iterative skipping’ strategy. In that, by skipping a pre-determined number of observations, e.g. considering every fifth observation, the data set is divided into subsamples for which the independence assumption may be valid. For each such subsample of the data we estimate a capability index. Then traditional tests, assuming independence, can be performed based on each estimated capability index from the subsamples. By combining the information from each test statistic based on the subsamples in a suitable way, a new and efficient decision procedure is obtained. We discuss different ways of combining the information from these individual tests. A main appeal of our proposed method is that no time-series model is needed. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Screening experiments are typically used when attempting to identify a few active factors in a larger pool of potentially significant factors. In general, two-level regular factorial designs are used, but Plackett–Burman (PB) designs provide a useful alternative. Although PB designs are run-efficient, they confound the main effects with fractions of strings of two-factor interactions, making the analysis difficult. However, recent discoveries regarding the projective properties of PB designs suggest that if only a few factors are active, the original design can be reduced to a full factorial, with additional trials frequently forming attractive patterns. In this paper, we show that there is a close relationship between the partial confounding in certain PB designs and their projective properties. With the aid of examples, we demonstrate how this relationship may help experimenters better appreciate the use of PB designs. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blocking is commonly used in experimental design to eliminate unwanted variation by creating more homogeneous conditions for experimental treatments within each block. While it has been a standard practice in experimental design, blocking fractional factorials still presents many challenges due to differences between treatment and blocking variables. Lately, new design criteria such as the total number of clear effects and fractional resolution have been proposed to design blocked two-level fractional factorial experiments. This article presents a flexible matrix representation for two-level fractional factorials that will allow experimenters and software developers to block such experiments based on any design criterion that is suitable with the experimental conditions. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern products frequently feature monitors designed to detect actual or impending malfunctions. False alarms (Type I errors) or excessive delays in detecting real malfunctions (Type II errors) can seriously reduce monitor utility. Sound engineering practice includes physical evaluation of error rates. Type II error rates are relatively easy to evaluate empirically. However, adequate evaluation of a low Type I error rate is difficult without using accelerated testing concepts, inducing false alarms using artificially low thresholds and then selecting production thresholds by appropriate extrapolation, as outlined here. This acceleration methodology allows for informed determination of detection thresholds and confidence in monitor performance with substantial reductions over current alternatives in time and cost required for monitor development. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we present a procedure to analyze split-plot experiments with mirror image pairs as sub-plots when third- and higher-order interactions can be assumed negligible. Although performing a design in a split-plot manner induces correlation among observations, we show that with such designs the essential search for potentially active factors can be done in two steps using ordinary least squares. The suggested procedure is tested out on a real example and on two simulated screening examples; one with a split-plot design based on a geometric design and one with a split-plot design based on a non-geometric Plackett and Burman design. The examples also illustrate the advantage of using non-geometric designs where the effects are partially aliased instead of being fully aliased as in highly fractionated fractional factorials. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article calls for the submission of papers on data mining technologies and their applications in various domains sucha as engineering, health care, bioinformatics, social sciences and finance.

An editorial is presented which discusses the aspects of Design for Six Sigma (DFSS). The authors consider the association between DFSS and Six Sigma in terms of principle and practice. They explain that the differences between Six Sigma and DFSS are not restricted to their reactive and proactive natures. They comment on the quantitative techniques used in a DFSS project.

This section calls for papers for a 2008 issue of the "Quality and Reliability Engineering International (QREI)" on design methodology and theory, program management, proess capability evaluation and other related topics.