Knowledge discovery from industrial databases

Abstract

The proliferation of large masses of data has created many new opportunities for those working in science, engineering and business. The field of data mining (DM) and knowledge discovery from databases (KDD) has emerged as a new discipline in engineering and computer science. In the modern sense of DM and KDD the focus tends to be on extracting information characterized as “knowledge” from data that can be very complex and in large quantities. Industrial engineering, with the diverse areas it comprises, presents unique opportunities for the application of DM and KDD, and for the development of new concepts and techniques in this field. Many industrial processes are now automated and computerized in order to ensure the quality of production and to minimize production costs. A computerized process records large masses of data during its functioning. This real-time data which is recorded to ensure the ability to trace production steps can also be used to optimize the process itself. A French truck manufacturer decided to exploit the data sets of measures recorded during the test of diesel engines manufactured on their production lines. The goal was to discover “knowledge” in the data of the test engine process in order to significantly reduce (by about 25%) the processing time. This paper presents the study of knowledge discovery utilizing the KDD method. All the steps of the method have been used and two additional steps have been needed. The study allowed us to develop two systems: the discovery application is implemented giving a real-time prediction model (with a real reduction of 28%) and the “discovery support environment” now allows those who are not experts in statistics to extract their own knowledge for other processes.