Manufacturers have faced an increasing need for the development of predictive models that predict mechanical failures and the remaining useful life (RUL) of manufacturing systems or components. Classical model-based or physics-based prognostics often require an in-depth physical understanding of the system of interest to develop closed-form mathematical models. However, prior knowledge of system behavior is not always available, especially for complex manufacturing systems and processes. To complement model-based prognostics, data-driven methods have been increasingly applied to machinery prognostics and maintenance management, transforming legacy manufacturing systems into smart manufacturing systems with artificial intelligence. While previous research has demonstrated the effectiveness of data-driven methods, most of these prognostic methods are based on classical machine learning techniques, such as artificial neural networks (ANNs) and support vector regression (SVR). With the rapid advancement in artificial intelligence, various machine learning algorithms have been developed and widely applied in many engineering fields. The objective of this research is to introduce a random forests (RFs)-based prognostic method for tool wear prediction as well as compare the performance of RFs with feed-forward back propagation (FFBP) ANNs and SVR. Specifically, the performance of FFBP ANNs, SVR, and RFs are compared using an experimental data collected from 315 milling tests. Experimental results have shown that RFs can generate more accurate predictions than FFBP ANNs with a single hidden layer and SVR.

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The emergence of cloud computing, industrial internet of things (IIoT), and new machine learning techniques have shown the potential to advance prognostics and health management (PHM) in smart manufacturing. While model-based PHM techniques provide insight into the progression of faults in mechanical components, certain assumptions on the underlying physical mechanisms for fault development are required to develop predictive models. In situations where there is a lack of adequate prior knowledge of the underlying physics, data-driven PHM techniques have been increasingly applied in the field of smart manufacturing. One of the limitations of current data-driven methods is that large volumes of training data are required to make accurate predictions. Consequently, computational efficiency remains a primary challenge, especially when large volumes of sensor-generated data need to be processed in real-time applications. The objective of this research is to introduce a cloud-based parallel machine learning algorithm that is capable of training large-scale predictive models more efficiently. The random forests (RFs) algorithm is parallelized using the MapReduce data processing scheme. The MapReduce-based parallel random forests (PRFs) algorithm is implemented on a scalable cloud computing system with varying combinations of processors and memories. The effectiveness of this new method is demonstrated using condition monitoring data collected from milling experiments. By implementing RFs in parallel on the cloud, a significant increase in the processing speed (14.7 times in terms of increase in training time) has been achieved, with a high prediction accuracy of tool wear (eight times in terms of reduction in mean squared error (MSE)).