Analysis of lead times of metallic components in the aerospace industry through a supported vector machine model

The aim of the present paper is the analysis of the factors that have influence over the lead time of batches of metallic components of aerospace engines. The approach used in this article employs support vector machines (SVMs). They are a set of related supervised learning methods used for classification and regression. In this research a model that estimates whether a batch is going to be finished on the forecasted time or not was developed using some sample batches. The validity of this model was checked using a different sample of similar components. This model allows predicting the manufacturing time before the start of the manufacturing. Therefore a buffer time can be taken into account in order to avoid delays with respect to the customer's delivery. Further, some other researches have been performed over the data in order to determine which factors have more influence in manufacturing delays. Finally, conclusions of this study are exposed. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.