ADVANCED ENGINEERING

INFORMATICS
Advanced Engineering Informatics 21 (2007) 303–310
www.elsevier.com/locate/aei

A hybrid system for SPC concurrent pattern recognition

Zheng Chen, Susan Lu *, Sarah Lam
Department of Systems Science and Industrial Engineering, State University of New York at Binghamton, United States

Received 28 October 2005; received in revised form 8 June 2006; accepted 8 March 2007

Abstract

Any nonrandom patterns shown in Statistical Process Control (SPC) charts imply possible assignable causes that may deteriorate the
process performance. Hence, timely detecting and recognizing Control Chart Patterns (CCPs) for nonrandomness is very important in
the implementation of SPC. Due to the limitations of run-rule-based approaches, Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) have been resorted
for detecting CCPs. However, most of the reported ANN approaches are only limited to recognize single basic patterns. Different from
these approaches, this paper presents a hybrid approach by integrating wavelet method with ANNs for on-line recognition of CCPs
including concurrent patterns. The main advantage of this approach is its capability of recognizing coexisted or concurrent patterns with-
out training by concurrent patterns. The test results using simulated data have demonstrated the improvements and the effectiveness of
the methodology with a success rate up to 91.41% in concurrent CCP recognition.
Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Pattern recognition; Statistical process control; Concurrent pattern; Neural networks; Wavelet theory; Backpropagation

1. Introduction with a specific set of assignable causes provided that appro-

Statistical Process Control (SPC) is one of the most
widely used tools for quality control and improvement in
manufacturing industries. Among different SPC charts,
Shewhart control charts are universally recognized as one
of the most important process monitoring tools for the
detection of out-of-control situations. Upon the out-of-
control is alarmed, the assignable causes for the abnormal
process need to be identified and removed in order to bring
the process back to normal. The basic structure of Shew-
hart Control charts is to plot quality observations vs. time
(or sample sequences) with specified upper/lower control
limits. In the implementation of control charts, the process
is considered out-of-control when one or more points fall
outside the control limits, or when the plotted points exhi-
bit some nonrandom patterns of behavior [14]. Those non-
random Control Chart Patterns (CCPs) can be associated
*
Corresponding author. Fax: +1 607 777 4910.
E-mail address: slu@binghamton.edu (S. Lu).
priate process knowledge is available [19]. Hence effective
identification of nonrandom patterns can greatly narrow
down a set of possible assignable causes to be investigated,
and significantly speed up the diagnostic process. The anal-
ysis of control charts involves pattern recognition by which
systematic or nonrandom patterns on the control chart are
recognized and the associated underlying root causes are
identified.
There are several reported research papers on summari-
zation and categorization of all possible patterns that are
commonly appeared in SPC charts. The Western Electronic
[19] first proposed a guideline for identifying the out-of-
control process by observing systematic patterns on the
control charts. Nelson [2,10] further systematically devel-
oped an organized summary for out-of-control patterns.
Later Wang et al. [11,15] defined and summarized 30 pos-
sible control chart patterns, which are categorized as 8
basic patterns and 22 superimposed (concurrent) patterns.
The superimposed patterns are virtually the combination
of the basic patterns in trend, cycles, and their mixtures
[9]. Fig. 1 shows some basic control chart patterns.

1474-0346/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.aei.2007.03.002
304 Z. Chen et al. / Advanced Engineering Informatics 21 (2007) 303–310
Upward Trend Pattern Downward Trend Pattern
Systematic Pattern Upward Shift Pattern
Fig. 1. Typical nonrandom control chart patterns [9].
In applying SPC, timely detection and identification of
different patterns are crucial to detect abnormal process,
determine the associated assignable causes, and finally
remove the causes that drive the process out of control.
However, pattern recognition in SPC charts is a challeng-
ing task. In practice, CCP recognition has been based on
visual examination by operators [9], of which the effective-
ness of SPC relies on operator’s training and experiences.
Numerous approaches have been developed to assist oper-
ators for effectively detecting CCPs. These methods can be
generally classified into two basic categories. One category
is the run-rule-based approaches including run rules, zone
tests, and Expert Systems (ESs), etc. The other category
is the pattern recognition approach represented by Artifi-
cial Neural Networks (ANNs). Among the different
approaches in the first category, the run rules or zone tests
have been the major tools for detecting CCPs over many
years. The most widely used run rules are developed by
AT&T and Motorola [12]. These rules are expressed in
descriptive language with quantitative measures, such as
the process will be pronounced out-of-control if four out
of five consecutive points fall beyond the same ±1-sigma
band. Zone tests are just variations of the basic run rules.
The ESs developed for process control purpose are also
run-rule-based [4,9]. These run-rule-based approaches have
certain limitations in implementation. For example, the
effectiveness of these run rules and zone tests heavily relies
on the skills and experience of the operator or analyst.
Another major difficulty is that there is no one-to-one map-
ping between a run rule and a nonrandom pattern [4].
There might be several patterns associated with a particular
rule, which makes it difficult to associate a pattern with its
corresponding assignable causes. For the ES approach, a
serious problem affecting its performance is that inherent
common cause variation or noise embedded in process data
may often result in false pattern recognition [9].
Cycle Pattern
Downward Shift Pattern
Recently, ANNs have been applied to pattern recogni-
tion for control charts [7,6,9,8,1,4,17]. In pattern recogni-
tion, ANNs has the capability to recall learned patterns
from noisy data, making ANN a suitable tool for CCP rec-
ognition [9]. In most of the reported ANN approaches, the
networks were constructed and trained to recognize several
types of basic patterns, such as linear trend, sudden shift,
cycle, and stratification, etc. Among those network archi-
tectures being selected for the CCP recognition, Backprop-
agation Network (BPN) has been proven to be one of the
most robust designs that is capable of producing fast and
accurate classification results. The ANN approach to rec-
ognize CCPs has been reported to outperform other
approaches, such as run rules and zone tests, with respect
to recognition accuracy and speed [20]. However, the
reported ANN approaches are mainly developed for recog-
nizing the eight basic patterns but are incapable for recog-
nizing the 22 superimposed patterns. It is quite common
that multiple nonrandom patterns may coexist in a manu-
facturing process. As a consequence, the pattern recognizer
with the capability of recognizing concurrent patterns is
desirable. Unfortunately, the coverage of these issues in
the literatures is quite limited. Most researchers assume
that only one particular pattern would be present during
a period of time [17,4,9] in order to simplify the pattern rec-
ognition task. Guh [9] first presented a two-stage ANN
approach for concurrent pattern recognition. However,
the results showed that a single pattern trained network
was not capable of identifying the co-existence of multiple
CCPs, mainly due to large type II errors. Though a modi-
fied network trained with both single and concurrent pat-
terns was reported to greatly reduce the type II errors,
the addition of concurrent pattern training samples not
only increases the network size and training time, but also
diminish the network’s capability to recognize single pat-
tern CCPs.
 Z. Chen et al. / Advanced Engineering Informatics 21 (2007) 303–310
Different from the above approaches, this paper presents
a hybrid approach by integrating wavelet method with
ANNs for on-line recognition of the concurrent patterns.
In the hybrid system, concurrent CCPs are first prepro-
cessed by wavelet transform to decompose the concurrent
patterns into different levels or patterns, and then its corre-
sponding features are fed into neural network classifiers
for pattern recognition. The advantages of this approach
are its capability of recognizing the coexisted or concur-
rent patterns without training by concurrent patterns. It
can significantly reduce the training time and training
data for Neural Networks. The test results using simu-
lated data, summarized in Section 3.2, have demonstrated
the improvements and the effectiveness of the hybrid
approach.
2. Hybrid approach for CCP recognition
Although different approaches have been developed for
detecting CCPs, as summarized above, there are still some
challenges associated with the analysis of CCPs. First, the
random noise may contaminate the pattern making it diffi-
cult to recognize, especially when the magnitude of the
nonrandom pattern is not significant or if the signal-to-
noise ratio is low [4]. Second, some of the patterns may
resemble other patterns with partial common features, thus
becoming difficult to differentiate. Third, the problem
becomes much more complicated if two or more simple
patterns exist concurrently to form superimposed patterns,
e.g., a trend mixed with a cycle, as shown in Fig. 2 [8]. To
tackle these challenges, especially targeting the concurrent
patterns, this paper addresses a hybrid approach to inte-
grate wavelet method with neural networks to recognize
complex patterns.
It is not an unusual phenomenon that multiple non-
random patterns coexist to form a concurrent pattern in
a manufacturing process. For instance, trends (may be
caused by tool wear) and cycles (due to a succession of
movements of parts relative to the tool or voltage fluctua-
tion of power supply) commonly coexist in a machining
process, as depicted in Fig. 2. Wang et al., 1998 demon-
Measurements
Upper Control Limit
Process Mean
Lower Control Limit
Time
Fig. 2. An example of concurrent pattern (upward trend mixed with
cycle).
305
strated 30 nonrandom patterns resulting from the combi-
nation of several basic patterns. In the thirty patterns,
there are eight basic patterns and the rest are concurrent
patterns. As a consequence, the pattern recognizer must
have the capability to address the issue when multiple
sources of nonrandom pattern exist simultaneously.
This paper addresses a hybrid approach to tackle the
concurrent pattern recognition problem by incorporating
neural network with wavelet transform, a widely used tech-
nique for signal processing. In this hybrid system, the con-
current CCP is first preprocessed by wavelet transform and
then fed into neural network classifiers for pattern recogni-
tion. The structure of the hybrid CCP recognition system
is shown in Fig. 3. The major advantage of the hybrid
method is that wavelet pre-processing can decompose a
raw concurrent pattern signal into two basic pattern signals
that can be easily recognized by the neural network model.
On the contrary, without pattern decomposition, the neu-
ral network alone is not capable of recognizing concurrent
patterns since its recognition capability is limited by what it
has been trained on, which are the seven basic patterns. In
the following two sections, wavelet transformation for SPC
data preprocessing and neural networks for pattern recog-
nition are discussed.
2.1. Preprocessing SPC data with wavelet transformation
The most well known signal-processing tool is Fourier
analysis, which is a mathematical technique to transform
a signal from time domain to frequency domain. However,
Fourier analysis has a serious drawback that time informa-
tion is lost during the transformation, while wavelet trans-
form can still keep time information. Wavelet transform is
a method that allows the signal to be viewed in multiple
resolutions with each resolution representing a different fre-
quency. Therefore, wavelet transform allow complex infor-
mation such as images and patterns to be decomposed into
elementary components at different positions (time-
domain) and scales (frequency-domain). These elements
can be subsequently reconstructed to resemble the original
signal with high precision [5]. Therefore, it has gained pop-
ularity with applications in de-noising, data compression,
and feature extraction [5,13,16].
Similar to Fourier transform, the wavelet coefficients, C,
which is a function of scale and position, could be defined
as:
Z 1
Cðscale; positionÞ ¼ f ðtÞuðscale; position; tÞ dt ð1Þ
1
SPC Wavelet Neural Networks
Measurements Transformation Classifier
Selection of Significant
Coefficients
Fig. 3. Combining wavelet preprocessing with neural networks.
306 Z. Chen et al. / Advanced Engineering Informatics 21 (2007) 303–310
Signal f(t)
High scale (stretched wavelet) == low frequency
where u (scale, position, t) is dilated and translated version
from one of the various mother wavelets with its integral
over time equal to zero. Multiplying each coefficient by
the appropriately scaled and shifted wavelet yields the con-
stituent wavelets of the original signal. The demonstration
of wavelet transformation is shown in Fig. 4.
Calculating wavelet coefficients at every possible scale is
a strenuous work. To facilitate real-world applications, the
fast discrete wavelet transform algorithm is generally used
which yield much more efficient computation and provides
results just as accurate [13]. At each level of the transform,
the signal data are processed through a low-pass filter and
a high-pass filter. The high-pass filtered data represents the
‘‘details’’ of the signal, whereas the result of low-pass trans-
form is called ‘‘approximations’’, consisting of high-scale/
low frequency components of the signal, which would be
further used as input data to compute the next level of
splitting, iteratively. In practice, one needs to select a suit-
able number of levels based on the nature of the signal. Just
like Fourier transform, the wavelet algorithm is invertible
Signal
Low-Pass Filters
1st Level
Approximations
(A1)
2nd Level 2nd Level Details
Approximations
(A2)
3rd Level 3rd Level Details
Approximations (D3)
(A3)
(Further splitting)
S = A1 + D1 = A2 + D2 + D1 = A3 + D3 + D2 + D1
Fig. 5. Wavelet decomposition and reconstruction [13].
Low scale (compressed wavelet) == High frequency
Constituent wavelets of different scales and positions
Fig. 4. Demonstration of wavelet transform [13].
such that the signal can be reconstructed iteratively from
those detail coefficients together with the last-level approx-
imation coefficient, as illustrated in Fig. 5. By using this
method, the concurrent CCP can be decomposed into the
basic CCP patterns, and then the ANN method is
employed for pattern recognition, which is discussed in
the following section.
2.2. Neural networks for pattern recognition
Many different neural network architectures and learn-
ing algorithms have been adopted for control chart pattern
recognition systems, such as Backpropagation Networks
(BPN) [17,4,9,8], Learning Vector Quantization (LVQ)
Networks [17], unsupervised Adaptive Resonance Theory
Network [18] and Modular Neural Networks (MNN) [4],
etc. The authors of this paper have conducted a compara-
tive study on five neural networks, i.e., BPN, LVQ, Radial
Basis Function Networks (RBF), Probabilistic Neural Net-
works (PNN), and Generalized Regression Neural Net-
works (GRNN), for the CCP single pattern recognition.
The results indicate that all other networks are outper-
formed by BPN, with regards to classification accuracy,
(S) output stability, and training speed (in LVQ and RBF
cases). Using an input window size of 24, a BPN model
with resilient backpropagation learning algorithm and sig-
High-Pass Filters
moid transfer function is capable of producing satisfactory
classification accuracies of about 92% on average [3]. Based
on this comparison result, the best BPN architecture is
1st Level Details
(D1)
adopted for the hybrid CCP recognition system. It includes
(D2)
Recognized
Process Data Patterns
Output Layer
Input Layer (7 neurons)
(24 neurons) Hidden Layer
(40 neurons)
Fig. 6. Topology of the BPN pattern recognizer.
 Z. Chen et al. / Advanced Engineering Informatics 21 (2007) 303–310 307

one hidden-layer of 24-40-7 architecture with Recurrent Generate basic Generate concurrent
Backpropagation (RBP) training algorithm, sigmoid trans- pattern signals (6 CCPs (uptrend plus
types) using Monte- cycle)
fer function, and a learning rate of 0.01. The topology the Carlo simulation
BPN pattern recognizer is demonstrated in Fig. 6. To avoid
over-fitting in training, the stop criterion for BPN training Take moving Take moving Wavelet
average of 3 average without decomposition and
is specified as 1200 training epochs or when the validation BPN
consecutive data wavelet analysis reconstruction
stop criterion is met. The percentage correct classification points
rate is used for performance evaluation.
BPN training using Take moving
single pattern BPN Pattern average
samples Recognition without
3. Demonstration and test for hybrid pattern recognition wavelet transform

technique

As aforementioned, multiple nonrandom patterns may
coexist in a manufacturing process. The mixed concurrent
pattern makes pattern recognition very difficult. How to
pinpoint the presence of multiple patterns and make cor-
rect discrimination between them is an un-fully explored
research area. To address this issue, this paper proposes a
new method to deal with the concurrent pattern recogni-
tion task by incorporating neural networks with wavelet
transform. For demonstration purpose, one type of con-
current pattern, uptrend plus cycle, is presented. The sam-
ple data are generated using the Monte Carlo simulation by
adding the uptrend with the cycle. A total of 1050 SPC data
sets with the concurrent pattern are created. Before being
sent to the ANNs as inputs, the concurrent signals are
decomposed into multi-level details and low-frequency
approximations using wavelet transform. A discriminative
rule is developed to select significant details information
that corresponds to the embedded cycle signals. For com-
parison purpose, the raw data without wavelet preprocess-
ing is also tested on the BPN network. Fig. 7 shows a flow
chart of the data processing and system programming. In
the following sections, pattern generation for BPN train-
ing, data preprocessing with wavelet transform, and pat-
tern recognition results are discussed.
3.1. CCP pattern generation for BPN training
Six basic nonrandom patterns, i.e., upward trend, down-
ward trend, cycle, systematic, upward shift, and downward
BPN Pattern
Recognition after
wavelet transform
Compare results
Fig. 7. Flow chart of the proposed methodology.
shift, and the normal pattern of random variation are used
for training the neural networks. All the patterns were
defined based on the definitions in the Western Electric
Handbook [19]. Due to the need for large numbers of
example patterns for network training, a Monte-Carlo sim-
ulation approach [9] was used to generate the required sets
of CCPs for both training and testing samples. The formu-
las used for pattern generation is:
xðtÞ ¼ l þ nðtÞ þ dðtÞ ð2Þ
where t is the time of sampling, x(t) is the sample value at
time t, l is the process mean, n(t) is random noise influ-
enced by common cause at time t, and d(t) is the distur-
bance caused by special cause at time t (zero when no
nonrandom pattern present). The random noise is assumed
to follow a normal distribution with a mean of zero and a
fixed standard deviation of r, where r is a constant when
the process is in control. The parameters used to generate
seven CCPs are based on Guh and Tannock’s work [9,8],
which are summarized in Table 1. Moving averages are ta-
ken for every 3 consecutive data points to smooth out the
random noise in the simulated sample data [17]. The above-
mentioned BPN model is then used to train on those

Table 1
The formulas and parameters used for seven CCPs
Pattern types Formula of dðtÞ Parameters Description Quantity
Upward trend d*t d 2 (0.1r, 0.26r) Slope 600
Downward trend d 2 (0.1r) d 0 2 (0.26r,  0.1r) 600
Cycle a * sin(2pt/X) a 2 (1.0r, 3.0r) Amplitude cycle period 600
X 2 {4,5,6,7,8}
Systematic m * (1)t m 2 (1.0r, 3.0r) Magnitude of process fluctuation 600
Upward shift u*s s 2 (1.0r, 3.0r) s—Offset from the process mean 600
u = 0 or 1
Downward shift u * s0 s 0 2 (1.0r, 3.0r) u = 0 or 1 u—Parameter to determine the position of shifting 600
(u = 0 before shifting, u = 1 after shifting)
u = 0 or 1
Normal x(t) = l + 3r * n(t) 600
308 Z. Chen et al. / Advanced Engineering Informatics 21 (2007) 303–310

Table 2
Comparison of correct pattern recognition rates between ANN-only and Hybrid approach (ANN with Wavelet), 3-level decomposition vs. 5-level
decomposition
Date sets Cycle periods Correct pattern recognition rate (%) and Type II error (%)
Traditional ANNs without wavelet Hybrid approach with wavelet (3-levels) Hybrid approach with wavelet (5-levels)
Single Concurrent b error Concurrent b error Concurrent
CCPs CCPs (Single CCPs) CCPs (Single CCPs) CCPs
1 4 92.86 0 1.62 81.90 1.62 74.95
5 90.48 84.48
6 82.86 76.48
7 40.86 33.71
8 66.19 54.19

2 4 91.90 0 3.33 76.10 3.05 61.14

5 80.67 44.29
6 45.71 32.00
7 69.81 52.57
8 63.24 61.90

3 4 91.81 0 10.67 96.29 9.71 90.86

5 94.67 83.71
6 92.95 92.29
7 88.76 77.05
8 88.76 80.29

4 4 91.24 0 7.52 96.38 4.76 67.62

5 96.19 44.57
6 90.76 68.95
7 87.52 52.57
8 95.81 81.71

5 4 90.10 0 8.76 94.57 8.00 87.24

5 93.24 92.10
6 78.95 84.57
7 88.19 76.95
8 92.19 88.38

6 4 90.48 0 6.29 84.86 10.95 86.67

5 80.38 82.57
6 79.05 88.67
7 85.71 66.67
8 78.29 95.71

7 4 91.81 0 7.90 96.29 8.86 91.62

5 88.00 89.24
6 81.52 91.24
7 80.19 81.43
8 87.52 79.14

8 4 91.24 0 9.14 95.62 5.14 38.29

5 93.14 54.95
6 84.86 58.67
7 76.29 59.14
8 91.05 79.43

9 4 91.33 0 8.76 95.62 3.43 72.10

5 97.24 37.05
6 92.67 74.10
7 91.71 67.90
8 93.81 68.10

10 4 92.29 0 11.05 96.48 6.86 60.57

5 94.00 39.33
6 87.62 69.05
7 89.71 41.52
8 88.76 87.14
 Z. Chen et al. / Advanced Engineering Informatics 21 (2007) 303–310
‘‘smoothed-out’’ single pattern samples. For each network
experiment, the generated sample data (600 sample pat-
terns for each CCP) is divided into two subsets: 3/4 of
the data consists of training set and the rest (1/4 data) for
testing set. The 3/4 data set is further divided into two
subsets for training and validation purpose, respectively.
3.2. Test of hybrid approach for recognizing concurrent
CCPs
In wavelet analysis, as seen in Fig. 5, the raw data are
decomposed into different levels with each level having
two components: details and approximation. Each details
separated from the previous level signal contains informa-
tion at relatively high frequencies, while the approxima-
tions represent long-term trend of the signal change with
relatively low frequencies. For the concurrent pattern
(trend plus cyclic pattern) on hand, the part of cyclic signal
is embedded somewhere in those details and trend part is
included in the approximations. In this paper, the wavelet
decomposition is carried out using one of the Daubechies
family wavelet functions because of its orthogonally prop-
erty, by which the signals can be reconstructed after the
transform with no loss of information.
In order to decide how many levels of decomposition is
sufficient to extract the useful pattern information, a 5-level
and 3-level decomposition are applied and the pattern rec-
ognition results are compared. The tests are conducted on
both varied-period and fixed-period concurrent pattern
data. For the varied-period concurrent pattern data, it
shows that the 3-level decomposition tends to produce bet-
ter classification accuracy at 87.37% on average, compared
with 74.13% for a 5-level decomposition level. Considering
the fact that in real manufacturing only one fixed cycle per-
iod would dominate due to some assignable cause at a time,
one may want the trained network be tested on concurrent
patterns with different fixed cycle periods. In this research,
tests on concurrent patterns with different cycle periods 4,
5, 6, 7, and 8 are conducted. The test results and their com-
parison with traditional ANN approach are summarized in
Table 2, in which the correct pattern recognition rates are
obtained based on ANN training by basic patterns only.
The table shows that traditional ANNs and hybrid
approach have similar correct recognition rate for recog-
nizing basic patterns. However, the significant advantage
of the hybrid system is its capability for recognizing con-
current patterns with correct recognition rate 85% on aver-
age. The type II error, the misclassification probability, on
single pattern data is also shown in the table. As seen in the
table, the network outputs also show better performance
for 3-level decomposition comparing with 5-level decompo-
sition, with low correct recognition rate at nearly 80% for
cyclic period of 7 and a high of 91.41% correct for period
of 4. In the practical applications, the determination of
decomposition level is associated with cycle periods of
interest to detect. The longer cycle periods, the higher
decomposition may be need, but generally 3–5 levels are
309
sufficient for the cyclic patterns shown in SPC charts with
data window size 24. Further study on optimal selection
of the decomposition level will be carried out in future
research.
4. Conclusion
The identification of each single pattern embedded in
concurrent patterns in SPC control charts can lead to the
finding of multiple assignable causes simultaneously, and
thus significantly reduce the diagnostic time for out-of-con-
trol process. However, the traditional run-rule-based
approach and stand along ANN approach are not capable
for recognizing concurrent patterns. The paper proposed a
hybrid ANN-based approach which is capable of recogniz-
ing both single basic patterns and concurrent patterns with
satisfied accuracy, when incorporating wavelet preprocess-
ing with appropriate decomposition strategy. The 3-level
wavelet decomposition produces an average classification
accuracy of 87.37% for varied-period concurrent patterns
with a type II error (misclassification probability on single
pattern CCPs) less than 10%. For fix-period signals, the
hybrid system achieves 85% correct recognition rate in
average and the high rate of 91.41% for fixed period of 4.
The dispersion of classification accuracy for the five differ-
ent periods can be alleviated by increasing the size of train-
ing data set to reduce bias within the generated pattern
samples.
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