Neural Networks and Manufacturing

In the manufacturing industry artificial neural networks are used to perform manufacturing functions, to control the quality of the finished product and to maintain machine used to produce it. In machines that do more than one job process neural networks work by telling the matching when one process is complete and how to move on to the next one. It also tells the machine in some cases when and how deep to cut raw materials such as glass. Because these raw materials have unpredictable depths or widths, a neural networks act like a human eye to eliminate waste and try to create uniformity from unalike materials.


To control quality of a product at the end of production, neural networks are used because they are faster and more efficient. In most print shops, printers use sensor that evaluated the amount of ink that is on each paper. If a paper doesn’t meet the preset specifications the whole production line is stopped and an employee must expel the bad printing. Other times the bad printing is expelled through a complicated system which starts when the sensor deems a printing bad, but never stopping production. Neural networks can also sort items by weight and color. The cranberry industry uses this technology to separate cranberries for their end use. Neural networks use channels sending different cranberries through different processes. Smaller cranberries are used for jellied sauce, white cranberries used to make juice, and the bigger redder ones are sold whole as is.


Neural networks are used to measure the fitness of certain machine components. Often in manufacturing blades get dull. Blades used for cutting raw materials are now being equipped with sensors that measure the vibration and tension created by cutting. When the vibration tells the sensor that the blade is weak, the machine either shuts off so the blade can be changed or in some cases changes the blade itself. This curtails the amount of material that would have to be discarded because the cut was not up to par.

Rajagopalan, Ramesh, and Purnima Rajagopalan. "Applications of Neural Network in Manufacturing." Proceedings of the 29th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (1996): 447-454.