Applications of neural networks in manufacturing: A state-of-the-art survey

Artificial intelligence has been claimed to yield revolutionary advances in manufacturing. While most of the survey papers about artificial intelligence in manufacturing have been focused on knowledge-based expert systems, fewer attentions have been paid to neural networks. However, neural networks are able to learn, adapt to changes, and can mimic human thought processes with little human interventions. They could be of great help for the present computer-integrated manufacturing and the future intelligent manufacturing systems. This paper presents a state-of-the-art survey of neural network applications in manufacturing. The objective of this paper is to update information about the applications of neural networks in manufacturing, which will provide some guidelines and references for the research and implementation.