Deep Learning Framework for Steel Surface Defects Classification

Abstract

Deep learning has offered new avenues in the field of industrial management. Traditional methods of quality inspection such as Acceptance Sampling relies on a probabilistic measure derived from inspecting a sample of finished products. Evaluating a fixed number of products to derive the quality level for the complete batch is not a robust approach. Visual inspection solutions based on deep learning can be employed in the large manufacturing units to improve the quality inspection units for steel surface defect detection. This leads to optimization of the human capital due to reduction in manual intervention and turnaround time in the overall supply chain of the industry. Consequently, the sample size in the Acceptance sampling can be increased with minimal effort vis-à-vis an increase in the overall accuracy of the inspection. The learning curve of this work is supported by Convolutional Neural Network which has been used to extract feature representations from grayscale images to classify theinputs into six types of surface defects. The neural network architecture is compiled in Keras framework using Tensorflow backend with state of the art Adam RMS Prop with Nesterov Momentum (NADAM) optimizer. The proposed classification algorithm holds the potential to identify the dominant flaws in the manufacturing system responsible for leaking costs.