A HMM-based fault detection method for piecewise stationary industrial processes

In this paper, fault detection in piecewise stationary industrial processes is investigated. Such processes can be modeled as sequences of distinct system modes in which the respective expectation values and variances of process variables do not change. In particular, piecewise stationary processes with autonomous transitions between system modes are considered in this work, i.e. processes without observable trigger events such as on/off signals. A Hidden Markov Model (HMM) is employed as underlying system model for such processes. System modes are modeled as hidden state variables with given transition probabilities. Continuous process variables are assumed to be Gaussian distributed with constant second order statistics in each system mode. A novel HMM-based fault detection method is proposed which incorporates the Viterbi algorithm into a fault detection method for hybrid industrial processes. Experimental results for the proposed fault detection method are presented for a module of the Lemgo Smart Factory.