Ai-enhanced thermal modeling for integrated process-product-system optimization in zero-defect manufacturing chains

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel approach for realising zero-defect manufacturing by integrating AI-based thermal modelling to perform multi-stage process, product, and system optimisation in complex manufacturing chains. It integrates advanced thermal simulation and sensor data feed in real-time as a multistage thermal prediction and management system via machine learning algorithms. This framework seeks to predict thermal behaviour using a combination of convolutional neural networks (CNNs), long short-term memory (LSTM) networks, and graph neural networks (GNNs) for encoding, predicting, and learning the spatial, temporal, and interactive thermal behaviour, respectively. It further embeds finite element analysis (FEA) simulations for high-fidelity thermal predictions using data fusion through Kalman filters. This helps obtain the optimal estimates of thermal states from sensor measurements involving different types of sensors and the characteristics of signals. A multistage multimodal optimization framework involves genetic algorithms (GA) for global thermal parameter optimisation, reinforcement learning (RL) for multi-stage dynamic process control optimisation, and multi-agent systems (MAS) for coordinated multi-stage multi-objective balance embedded in a digital twin architecture. Evaluation results show that the effectiveness of the proposed system in improving the overall production efficiency is 33%, reducing defects is 47%, and reducing energy utilisation is 22%, when compared to the current de facto approaches. There is also a 38% improvement in predictive capability in preventing, detecting, and predicting of cross-stage process faults.