Predicting Yarn Breaks in Textile Fabrics: A Machine Learning Approach

In this paper, we propose a Machine Learning (ML) approach to predict faults that may occur during the production of fabrics and that often cause production downtime delays. We worked with a textile company that produces fabrics under the Industry 4.0 concept. In particular, we deal with a client customization requisite that impacts on production planning and scheduling, where there is a crucial need of limiting machine stoppage. Thus, the prediction of machine stops enables the manufacturer to react to such situation. If a specific loom is expected to have more breaks, several measures can be taken: slower loom speed, special attention by the operator, change in the used yarn, stronger sizing recipe, etc. The goal is to model three regression tasks related with the number of weft breaks, warp breaks, and yarn bursts. To reduce the modeling effort, we adopt several Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) tools (H2O, AutoGluon, AutoKeras), allowing us to compare distinct ML approaches: using a single (one model per task) and Multi-Target Regression (MTR); and using the direct output target or a logarithm transformed one. Several experiments were held by considering Internet of Things (IoT) historical data from a Portuguese textile company. Overall, the best results for the three tasks were obtained by the single-target approach with the H2O tool using logarithm transformed data, achieving an R2 of 0.73 for weft breaks. Furthermore, a Sensitivity Analysis eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (SA XAI) approach was executed over the selected H2OAutoML model, showing its potential value to extract useful explanatory knowledge for the analyzed textile domain.