While increasing empirical evidence suggests that global time series forecasting models can achieve better forecasting performance than local ones, there is a research void regarding when and why the global models fail to provide a good forecast. This paper uses anomaly detection algorithms and Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) to answer when and why a forecast should not be trusted. To address this issue, a dashboard was built to inform the user regarding (i) the relevance of the features for that particular forecast, (ii) which training samples most likely influenced the forecast outcome, (iii) why the forecast is considered an outlier, and (iv) provide a range of counterfactual examples to understand value changes, in the feature vector or the predicted value, can lead to a different outcome. Moreover, a modular architecture and a methodology were developed to iteratively remove noisy data instances from the train set, to enhance the overall global time series forecasting model performance. Finally, to test the effectiveness of the proposed approach, it was validated on two publicly available real-world datasets.

Refineries execute a series of interlinked processes, where the product of one unit serves as the input to another process. Potential failures within these processes affect the quality of the end products, operational efficiency, and revenue of the entire refinery. In this context, implementation of a real-time cognitive module, referring to predictive machine learning models, enables to provide equipment state monitoring services and to generate decision-making for equipment operations. In this paper, we propose two machine learning models: 1) to forecast the amount of pentane (C5) content in the final product mixture; 2) to identify if C5 content exceeds the specification thresholds for the final product quality. We validate our approach by using a use case from a real-world refinery. In addition, we develop a visualization to assess which features are considered most important during feature selection, and later by the machine learning models. Finally, we provide insights on the sensor values in the dataset, which help to identify the operational conditions for using such machine learning models.

This research work describes an architecture for building a system that guide a user from a forecast generated by a machine learning model through a sequence of decision-making steps. The system is demonstrated in manufacturing demand forecasting use case and can be extended to other domains. In addition, the system provides means for knowledge acquisition by gathering data from users. Finally, it implements an active learning component and compares multiple strategies to recommend media news to the user. Such media news aims to provide additional context to demand forecasts and enhance judgment on decision-making.

Artificial Intelligence models are increasingly used in manufacturing to inform decision-making. Responsible decision-making requires accurate forecasts and an understanding of the models’ behavior. Furthermore, the insights into models’ rationale can be enriched with domain knowledge. This research builds explanations considering feature rankings for a particular forecast, enriching them with media news entries, datasets’ metadata, and entries from the Google Knowledge Graph. We compare two approaches (embeddings-based and semantic-based) on a real-world use case regarding demand forecasting.