A spatial-temporal feature fusion network for order remaining completion time prediction in discrete manufacturing workshop

The enterprises of the make-to-order production mode are required to make accurate judgments and reasonable decisions when dealing with the disturbance factors in the manufacturing process to ensure the timely completion of orders. Order remaining completion time (ORCT) prediction can quantify the production process and is an important basis to ensure the delivery date of orders. However, an accurate prediction model of the ORCT is challenging because of the spatial and temporal (ST) characteristics of the manufacturing process. An ST features-based prediction method is proposed to solve this problem. Firstly, the ST data sets are established on the basis of analysing ST characteristics of the manufacturing process. Secondly, the spatial feature extraction network and temporal feature extraction network are built to make a more comprehensive analysis. Finally, the prediction model of the ORCT is proposed by fusing the spatial and temporal features and validated in a practical workshop. Experimental results show that considering the spatial and temporal characteristics of the manufacturing process can significantly improve the prediction model’s performance, and the proposed prediction model is superior to graph convolutional neural network, gated recurrent unit network, deep auto-encoder, deep neural network, and back propagation neural network.