A hybrid approach to outlier detection in the offset lithographic printing process

Artificial neural networks are used to model the offset printing process aiming to develop tools for on-line ink feed control. Inherent in the modelling data are outliers owing to sensor faults, measurement errors and impurity of materials used. It is fundamental to identify outliers in process data in order to avoid using these data points for updating the model. We present a hybrid, the process-model-network-based technique for outlier detection. The outliers can then be removed to improve the process model. Several diagnostic measures are aggregated via a neural network to categorize data points into the outlier and inlier classes. We demonstrate experimentally that a soft fuzzy expert can be configured to label data for training the categorization of neural network.