A multitask encoder–decoder model for quality prediction in injection moulding

It is desirable in injection moulding that every yielded product is of high quality and precision. Several studies are conducted on modelling the relationship between the process parameters e.g., holding pressure, mould temperature, etc. that are either time series or non-time series, and the output product quality characteristics e.g., weight, dimensions, and warpage. To build a more comprehensive/generalized quality prediction model with online learning, this study for the first time takes time series process parameters from 2 pairs of in-mould pressure and temperature sensors simultaneously with 18 non-time series parameters and introduces a single deep learning architecture to perform multitask learning i.e., to leverage information from the related sources to simultaneously predict multiple product quality characteristics on a real injection moulding machine. This along with the discussed modern containerization practices develops a fully automated software part of the quality control process. The non-time series process parameters are learned by fully connected neural network layers of the model while the time series process parameters are related through an attention-based encoder–decoder architecture. This model is ablated as well as compared with a benchmark model to validate the performance advantage in terms of the reduced error asymptote. The proposed model offers an order of magnitude lower average mean squared error than the benchmark model, and 1.2 to 3 times smaller mean squared errors than its ablated versions.