Open Access Conference Proceedings

One of the aspects defining the paradigm sometimes called Industry 4.0 is the availability of large amounts of data generated by modern processes. Nowadays, most process parameters can be collected automatically and therefore, the large volume of process data generated becomes close to impossible to analyse manually, or at least, to be able to extract from it all the useful information that it contains.Advanced mathematical and computational tools to analyse data and create models automatically have existed for some time, being labeled at one time or another as Expert Systems, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Mining, Statistical Pattern Recognition etc. However, only recently the combination of automated data collection and fast computers have allowed to extend the benefits of such techniques beyond some niche applications and industries.This work introduces a new project to develop a comprehensive set of such tools aimed to fit industrial needs. As starter, several advanced model fitting techniques are applied to a metallurgical example. As dataset, a publicly available database on creep rupture is used. Supervised learning algorithms (using gradient descent training, normal equation regression, artificial neural networks), when correctly applied, allow to fit models to any set of complex data and to make reliable predictions with them. Unsupervised learning methods on the other hand, may also be used to find structure in the data without any a priori knowledge of such underlying structure (anomaly detection, clustering).

Keywords: Automated Model Fitting, Regression, Artificial Neural Networks, Anomaly Detection, Cluster Analysis

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