Deep Learning for Industrial AI: Challenges, New Methods and Best Practices

Industrial Al is concerned with the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and related technologies towards addressing real-world use cases in industrial and societal domains. These uses cases can be broadly categorized into the horizontal areas of maintenance and repair, operations and supply chain, quality, safety, design, and end-to-end optimization - with applications in a variety of verticals. In the last few years, we have witnessed a growing interest in applying Deep Learning (DL) techniques to Industrial Al problems, ranging from using sequence models such as Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) for predicting failures in equipment, to using Deep Reinforcement Learning (Deep RL) for scheduling and dispatching. Applying deep learning techniques to industrial applications imposes a set of unique challenges, which include, but are not limited to, (1) limited data, highly skewed class distribution and occurrence of rare classes such as failures, (2) multi-modal data (sensors, events, images, text, etc.) indexed over space and time (3) the need for explainable decisions, (4) a need to attain consistency between different but "related" models and between multiple generations of the same model, and (5) decision making to optimize business outcomes where the cost of a mistake could be very high. This tutorial presents an overview of these challenges, along with new methods and best practices to address them. Examples of these methods include using sequence DL models and Functional Neural Networks (FNNs) for modeling sensor and spatiotemporal measurements; using multi-task learning, graph models and ensemble learning for improving consistency of DL models; using deep RL for health indicator learning and dynamic dispatching; cost-based decision making for prognostics; and using GANs for generating senor data for prognostics. Finally, we will present some open problems in Industrial AI and how the research community can shape the future of the next industrial and societal revolution.