J Intell Manuf (2011) 22:585–595
DOI 10.1007/s10845-009-0321-7
Classification knowledge discovery in mold tooling test using
decision tree algorithm
Duen-Yian Yeh · Ching-Hsue Cheng ·
Shih-Chuan Hsiao
Received: 28 April 2009 / Accepted: 21 September 2009 / Published online: 7 October 2009
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009
Abstract The scale of Taiwan’s mold industry was ranked
the sixth in the world. But, under the global competitive pres-
sure, Taiwan has lost its competitive advantage gradually.
The only chance of Taiwan’s mold industry lies in improv-
ing the competitive abilities in product research, develop-
ment and design. In mold manufacturing cycle, mold tooling
test plays a very important role at accelerating the speed of
production. An experienced engineer can minimize the error
rate of mold tooling test according to his rich experiences
in parameter adjustment. However, this experience is mostly
implicit without theoretical basis and its knowledge is diffi-
cult to be transmitted. Benefiting from the well development
of data mining technologies, this study aimed at construct-
ing an intelligent classification knowledge discovery system
for mold tooling test based on decision tree algorithm, so
as to explore and accumulate the experimental knowledge
for the use of Taiwan’s mold industry. This study took the
only high-alloy steel manufacturer in Taiwan for case study,
and performed system validation with 66 record data. The
results showed the accuracy rates of prediction of training
data and testing data are 97.6 and 86.9%, respectively. In
addition, this study explored two classification knowledge
rules and proposed concrete proposals for tooling test param-
eter adjustment. Moreover, this study provided two ways,
rule verification and effectiveness comparison of four mining
algorithms, to conduct model verification. The experimental
D.-Y. Yeh
Department of Information Management, Transworld Institute
of Technology, Yunlin, Taiwan
e-mail: yeh@tit.edu.tw
C.-H. Cheng (B) · S.-C. Hsiao
Department of Information Management, National Yunlin University
of Science & Technology, 123 University Road, Section 3, Douliou,
Yunlin, Taiwan
e-mail: chcheng@mis4k.mis.yuntech.edu.tw
results showed the decision tree algorithm has an excellent
discriminatory power of classification and is able to provide
clear and simple reference rules for decisions.
Keywords Mold tooling test · Knowledge discovery ·
Data mining · Decision tree · Mold industry
Introduction
In Taiwan, the mold industry is known as the “mother of
industry,” which is the foundation of mass production of
products. Molds are the best tools for product standardiza-
tion, mass production and cost cutting of either simplest com-
modities or highly precise electronic parts. Figure 1 shows
the import and export values statistics of the mold industry
in Taiwan from 1998 to 2007. The annual gross values in the
recent 4 years were among NT$55–60 billions, which ranked
Taiwan the sixth in the world. In detail, the import and export
values distribution between Taiwan and various countries in
2007 is shown in Table 1. As seen, Mainland China was the
largest market to Taiwan, which accounts for 30.99% of the
export value and 44.29% of the import value (Taiwan Mold
and Die Industry Association 2009).
In the application market, Taiwan gives priority to molds
for electronic communication products. The characteristics
of electronic communication industry include shorter product
life cycle, shorter time to Market, and more product types but
small quantity. The electronic communication industry needs
to improve the design capacities of products and also expe-
dite the development speed of products, in order to respond
to severe challenges. In fact, in the cycle of product devel-
opment, the design and manufacturing capacities of molds
are key elements. In terms of economy and technology, the
relative advantages of Taiwan include fast pre-production,
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may influence the molding quality of products, including at

Fig. 1 Statistics of import and export values of the mold industry in
Taiwan
mature technology in highly precise and complex molds, the
operation model of “Made in Mainland China and Designed
& Marketing in Taiwan,” and low wage in Mainland China
for cost control. While the relative disadvantages are lack
of technical manpower and most of mold firms are small-
sized companies. In addition, the fund resources are likely
to be limited and downstream manufacturers move produc-
tion areas abroad, especially to the Mainland China. As a
result, the labor force highly depends on the Mainland China.
Generally speaking, most of Taiwan’s mold manufacturers
are small-sized, and always have difficulties in raising work-
ing capital. If without governmental support and preferential
measures for taxation, mold manufacturers would hard to
compete in the international market.
The mold industry is a high customization industry, cus-
tomer usually demands for a unique mold according to the
specifications of product. Therefore, each mold has its own
process and specific knowledge is required. The delivery
time, quality and cost of each mold would be determined
during its design and initial stage of tooling test (Lou et al.
2004). In the process of mold tooling test, many variables
least five items as follows (Agrawal et al. 1987).
1. High dependence on professional persons: if a product
in the period of mold tooling test has any defect, it is
required to have the engineers, designers and makers to
discuss potential problems together, and then modify the
mold for proper adjustment.
2. High development cost: in general, only one mold is pre-
pared. If multiple modifications are required, the unit cost
and time cost of mold development will be high.
3. Likely to be influenced by human factors: since the mold
development should be carried out by designers and tool-
ing test engineers, it must be influenced by human factors,
such as personal emotions, duty changes, and centripetal
force (Lu and Khim 2001).
4. Difficult accumulation of experience: the mold tooling
test engineer plays a very important role in the course of
development. An experienced mold tooling test engineer
may minimize the error rate after the injection molding
according to his rich mold knowledge and experience in
the adjustment of tooling test parameters. However, most
of the experiences are implicit knowledge and without
theoretical basis, and are difficult to transit.
5. Lack of knowledge rule classification: the accumulated
data in the existing database is enormous and lacks the
application function of reasoning. As a result, it is diffi-
cult to obtain information for parameter adjustment, nei-
ther to provide proper suggestions for engineers (Huang
and Lin 2008).
Therefore, how to classify and save mold tooling test engi-
neers’ precious knowledge rules, and let relevant knowledge
rules develop and grow with time based on mold design and

Table 1 Import and export

distributions between Taiwan Export (unit: NT1000 dollars) Import (unit: NT1000 dollars)
and various countries in 2007
Country Export value Percentage Ranking Country Import value Percentage Ranking

China 5,759,615 30.99 1 China 2,157,622 44.29 1

USA 1,724,547 9.28 2 Japan 1,616,512 33.18 2
Thailand 1,421,660 7.65 3 Korea 294,163 6.04 3
India 1,217,099 6.55 4 USA 237,231 4.87 4
HK 963,414 5.18 5 Holland 97,079 1.99 5
Japan 932,549 5.02 6 Canada 78,243 1.61 6
Indonesia 841,800 4.53 7 Singapore 70,161 1.44 7
Malaysia 832,227 4.48 8 Germany 57,209 1.17 8
Vietnam 761,690 4.10 9 Malaysia 47,704 0.98 9
Mexico 376,963 2.03 10 Thailand 29,443 0.60 10
Others 3,755,087 20.20 Others 185,899 3.82
Total 18,586,651 100 Total 4,871,266 100

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tooling test experiences, so as to improve the competitive
power of Taiwan’s mold industry, would be an urgent, seri-
ous and important topic for Taiwan’s mold industry.
With the fast progress of information technology, data
mining was developed and mainly applied to obtain valuable
information from enormous database, and conduct in-depth
analysis of data based on statistics and artificial intelligence
technologies to find out hidden knowledge (Nicholson 2006).
Many data mining tools have been developed in the mar-
ket, which are convenient for processing enormous data and
have a wide range of application (Fayyad et al. 1996; Chiu et
al. 2002), such as semiconductor manufacturing data feature
extraction (Li et al. 2006), knowledge mining (Rokach et al.
2008), sales forecasting (Chang et al. 2006, 2008), flow time
prediction (Chang and Liao 2006), etc. As one of data mining
algorithms, decision tree induction is a famous method for
extracting knowledge rules in classification problems. The
advantage of decision tree algorithm is that the results are
more comprehensive and easy to interpret and have a well
organized knowledge structure. Its applications, such as on
agricultural land grading (Zhao et al. 2009), machining oper-
ations selection (Deb et al. 2006) and fault pattern analysis
(Taetragool and Achalakul 2009), have obtained favorable
harvests (Wang 2007b).
Considering the successful applications to various fields
(Balic et al. 2006), decision tree algorithm may be applied to
the knowledge rule classification in mold tooling test devel-
opment, and its favorable assistance should be expected. This
study aimed to develop an intelligent classification knowl-
edge discovery system to conduct parameter research during
the mold tooling test development and found out valuable
knowledge through historical data. Through the feedback of
valuable knowledge and accumulated experiences, this sys-
tem enables engineers to improve the accuracy of mold tool-
ing test design, and to shorten the development period and
reduce material loss.
This study adopted the decision tree algorithm, and took
the only high-alloy steel manufacturer among the top 500
enterprises in Taiwan as the case study, and performed sys-
tem validation on 66 mold tooling test record data of injection
molding machine. The experimental results showed that the
accuracy rates of predictions of training data and test data
are 97.6 and 86.9%, respectively. In addition, this system
has explored two classification knowledge rules at the deci-
sion tree learning stage, and proposed concrete proposals
for the adjustment of mold tooling test parameters. More-
over, for the sake of closing to actual situation, this study
provided two ways, rule verification and effectiveness com-
parison of mining algorithms, to conduct model verifica-
tion. The rule verification was confirmed by the approval
of experienced experts. On the validation of the decision
tree algorithm availability, this study compared the effec-
tiveness of four classification techniques, which are deci-
587
sion tree, back-propagation neural network, combination of
decision tree and neural network and discriminate analysis.
According to the results, the decision tree algorithm has
an excellent discriminatory power of classification and is
able to provide a clear and simple rule as the reference for
decisions.
Data mining technologies
Data mining can be used to obtain significant and active
models and rules hidden in mass data by using full auto-
matic or semiautomatic algorithms, and combine relevant
knowledge and experiences as reference for event decisions,
thus, creating profits for enterprises (Wang 2007a; Rokach
and Maimon 2006; Quinlan 1987). As a function of data
mining, the classification method classifies and defines the
attributes (eigenvalues) of objects to set up the class, the
skills adopted include decision tree, memory-based reason-
ing (Wang 2007a; Chen et al. 1996; Quinlan 1993). This
study adopted the decision tree algorithm as the data min-
ing approach according to the characteristics of develop-
ment processes of mold tooling test (Wang et al. 2005). The
decision tree algorithms and other relevant technologies are
described as follows.
Decision tree algorithm
(1) Original technology
The decision tree algorithm (Quinlan 1986) can be
regarded as a separation method with goal. Firstly, an
optimal attribute is identified as the root node; all data
take this root node as the class condition, classifying
data in the same branch namely having the same par-
ticularity. Another optimal attribute is identified as the
class condition, and classification is made to form the
sub-tree of the decision tree. The same sorting process is
repeated until all data in a branch are of the same type,
and the sorting is finished. The keys of the construction
include:
a. Spend much more time on learning about data, to
know the definition and application of each variable.
b. Interview domain experts to acquaint domain
knowledge of data sources, and identify rule impor-
tance and the relationship inside variables or that
between variables.
c. Broaden the range of conversion of consecutive numer-
ical target variables to increase the performance of
decision tree algorithm.
d. Add in derived variables and catch important data rel-
evancy to increase the reliability of calculation result.
e. Select a proper value for lost data to make it signifi-
cant when integrated into a rule.
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f. Pick out input variables correlated to output variables. (1) Input Layer: signals of network are inputted through it,
the quantity of processing units is determined according
The algorithm family includes classical algorithms such
to problems.
as ID3 (Maher and Clair 1993), C4.5 (Breiman et al.
(2) Hidden Layer: for showing the mutual influence
1984), CART (Kass 1980), CHAID (Quinlan 1993) and
between input processing units, there is no standard
a number of modern systems. Focusing on obtaining the
method for deciding the quantity of processing units.
preliminary pattern of decision tree, this study adopted
Usually, more processing units in the hidden layer
the ID3 algorithm.
indicate slower convergence, but there are smaller error
(2) ID3 algorithm
values. However, when the quantity exceeds a certain
ID3 (Iterative Dichotomiser 3) algorithm is developed
number, it is hardly helpful to reducing errors, only the
from the concept learning system (Maher and Clair 1993).
execution time increases. On the other hand, if the quan-
It shall separate the data into three groups: structure of the
tity of processing units is too small, it is not able to reflect
records, training data and testing data. The calculation
the interaction effect between variables.
process is to use the information gain as the criterion for
(3) Output Layer: it represents the output variables of net-
deciding branches, and select the optimal attribute as the
work, the processing units depend on problems, and the
root node to construct the decision tree (Quinlan 1996).
final signal of network is outputted through it. It uses
(3) Selection of important attribute
non-linear transfer function, while the most used non-
When constructing the decision tree, reducing the dis-
linear transfer function of the Back-propagation Neural
order of newly generated sub-nodes after the test can
Network is Sigmoid Function.
obtain shallow depth of the decision tree; this is the basic
spirit of selecting mold tooling test important attribute.
The methods for selecting important attribute condition Comparison between decision tree and neural network
value can be divided into two methods, one is the intu- algorithms
ition method, and the other one is the information gain
method (Quinlan 1979). The decision tree and neural classification techniques have
their own advantages in the application area of data mining.
a. Intuition method: find out an attribute through experi- Table 2 shows the comparison between their advantages and
ences and intuition to maximize the difference between disadvantages (Kijsirikul and Chongkasemwongse 2001).
tested subsets. This method is applicable to very small
training set only.
Combined application of decision tree and neural network
b. Information gain method: the information gain is
algorithms
defined as “pretest information” reduces “informa-
tion after test”. Smaller difference of information
It is expected to be able to increase the accuracy rate of neural
indicates less disorder. Therefore, the attribute of
network algorithm effectively by taking the classes mined by
minimal difference after test can be selected. This
decision tree algorithm as the input data of neural classifica-
method is mainly applied to the decision tree ID3
tion model (Liu et al. 2004).
algorithm.

Intelligent mold tooling test classification knowledge

Neural network algorithm discovery system

The neural network is a computing system, including soft-
ware and hardware. It uses a lot of simple and connected
artificial neurons to simulate biological neural network and
export calculation results to the external environment or other
artificial neurons (Wong et al. 1997). In a neural network,
many artificial neurons are connected to compose different
network models or Network Paradigms. Among which the
Back-Propagation Neural Network (BPNN) is most widely
applied. The BPNN is a multi-layer feedforward network
architecture, which can be divided into output layer, input
layer and hidden layer processing units. The functions of all
layers are described as follows:
System architecture and analytical method
The system architecture is divided into five blocks, which are
interview experts, investigate important process parameters,
mine mold process knowledge, design and develop knowl-
edge-based system and analyze mining results, as shown in
Fig. 2.
(1) Interview experts: combine three scholars and seven
mold experts’ opinions about influential evaluation
parameters required for constructing the mold tooling
test knowledge discovery system.

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Table 2 Comparisons between

decision tree and neural network Algorithm Decision tree Neural network
algorithms Item

Assumption Independence between the classes None

Advantages 1. Discovering easy-understanding
rules
2. Suitable for rule-oriented field
3. Easy to classification
4. Easy to treat continuous and
category variables
Disadvantages 1. So many classes as to induce faults
2. Complex calculation and training
3. Incapable of treating not-right-angle
area
1. Multiple functions to handle extensive
problems
2. Capable to handle complicated field
and produce good connections
3. Easy to treat continuous and category
variables
4. Easy to obtain software
1. [0, 1]-Input
2. Incapable of explaining results
3. Possible to produce answers with bad
convergence

Intelligent mold tooling test classification rules for designers and engineers. This system uses the
knowledge discovery system
production data management (PDM) system and takes
Interview experts
Java program language object-oriented as the develop-
ment tool.
Investigate important process parameters (5) Analyze mining results, and make specific feedback of
analytic results.
Decision tree algorithm
Mine mold process knowledge
Neural network algorithm

Design and develop knowledge-based system PDM system Investigating important parameters of mold processes

Analyze mining results Results comparison
Fig. 2 Architecture of the intelligent classification knowledge discov-
ery system
(2) Investigate important process parameters of mold:
with reference to domestic and foreign literatures and
experts’ opinions through interviews, sort out the evalu-
ation parameters of mold tooling test process.
(3) Mine mold process knowledge: the mold tooling test pro-
cess is very complicated and is an instable loop program.
The decision tree algorithm and the neural network algo-
rithm are selected as the data mining method. These two
methods are combined for application and comparison,
to expect a preferable mining outcome.
(4) Design and develop knowledge-based system: this sys-
tem uses information technology to support the mold
process to set up an electronic knowledge base. Its four
primary objectives are experience accumulation, data
sharing, knowledge sharing and computerized operation,
and it provides accumulated mold tooling test
experiences, modification experiences, experiences in
setting of different parameters and implicit knowledge
The attribute parameter is determined based on two features
(Turng et al. 2002). One is the data diversification of mold
processes, the other one is the experiment data consideration:
the injection molding of each circle, from the cylinder tem-
perature to the injection pressure, totally 26 parameters shall
be recorded. The selection of data attribute parameter is per-
formed by using the information gain of ID3 algorithm, and
then the expert interview using a semiformal questionnaire.
The mold processes contain the following ten important oper-
ating parameters: injection temperature, mold temperature,
injection speed, injection pressure, injection time, injection
velocity, packing time, packing switch, cooling time and
ingredients melt index (MI) value.
Mining mold process knowledge
This section will describe the knowledge discovery steps for
mold processes according to the data mining steps (Wang
2007a).
(1) Stipulate data mining target
It aims to find out the implicit meanings of variable data
in the mold processes, conclude the reasons for failure,
and propose a directory guideline to adjust the direction
and range of parameter setting, so as to reduce mate-

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rial loss in the processes and reduce the times of mold Table 6 Classified orders of all nodes on each decision tree
tooling test. Order Parameter name Information gain
(2) Extract attribute parameter
Table 3 shows the ten important parameters of mold pro- 1 Mold temperature 0.43
cesses after extraction using ID3 algorithm and expert 2 Injection pressure 0.26
interview. 2 Injection velocity 0.26
(3) Determine target type 3 Injection temperature 0.24
Six variables for identifying failure of mold processes 4 Packing time 0.21
are defined according to frequent badness of finished 4 Packing switch 0.21
products, as shown in Table 4. 5 Cooling time 0.18
(4) Data normalization 6 Injection speed 0.10
It defines and separates values of parameters for conver- 7 Injection time 0.04
sions. The following three steps are used for the con- 8 Ingredients MI value 0.00
version of data, and the amplitude of change in each
parameter value is set, as shown in Table 5.
a. Set the first odd number (Ex: 00001) as the optimal Table 7 Parameter settings of decision tree
initial parameter, which acts as the basis of amplitude Parameter name Parameter setting
modulation setting.
Data collection period April 2007 to March 2008
b. Take the mean value of multi-segment data, for exam-
Data mining algorithm Decision tree
ple, mold temperature has six data such as N1, T1,
Input data 43 Training data
Maximum severity of root node 100
Minimum record number of root node 3
Table 3 Ten important parameters of mold processes after extraction
Maximum depth of the decision tree 5
Item no. Parameter name Item no. Parameter name
Class label Molding result
Output column 1
1 Injection temperature 6 Injection velocity
Molding result OK or NG
2 Mold temperature 7 Packing time
3 Injection speed 8 Packing switch
4 Injection pressure 9 Cooling time
5 Injection time 10 Ingredients MI value
T2, T3, T4 and T5, sum up N1–T5 and calculate the
mean temperature.
Table 4 Six variables for identifying failure of mold processes c. Eliminate unwanted parameters, import parameters
wanted only.
Item no. Variable name
(5) Set up data mining model
1 Streak
All original data are converted into variables of each
2 Stain
adjustment range through data conversion, and the clas-
3 Burn marks sified order of all nodes on each decision tree is set
4 Edges according to the information gain results of ID3 algo-
5 Unfilled parts rithm, expert opinions, and changes in all variables. The
6 Warped parts order is shown in Table 6.
(6) Result view and verification
Finally, as for the complete decision tree constructed in
Table 5 Amplitude settings of change in each parameter value data mining model, the results are validated and viewed
Category Positive range (%) Category Negative range (%) through the following two steps.

+A 0–5 −A 0 ∼ −5 a. Obtain optimal path: make decision tree pruning to

+B 5–10 −B −5 ∼ −10 procure the optimal path.
+C 10–15 −C −10 ∼ −15 b. Verify effective path: execute pruning function to elim-
+D 15–20 −D −15 ∼ −20 inate all zero ineffective nodes and data of
+E 20–∞ −E −20 ∼ −∞ which the sum of ‘goodness’ and ‘badness’ numbers
is less than ten.

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Results and data analysis (2) Model formation

Case company description
The case company was the only high-alloy steel manufac-
turer among top 500 enterprises in Taiwan. In recent years,
this company had a steady growth in its sales volume, from
NT$3 billion in 2005 to NT$5 billion in 2007. It had 66 mold
tooling test record data of the injection molding machine, and
the data collection time was from April 2007 to March 2008,
11 months in total.
Generation of rule
(1) Data set preparation
The ratio of injection molding records was set at 2:1
as the training data and testing data sets. The results
are:
a. Training stage: take 43 injection molding data,
including 35 ‘OK’ data and 8 ‘NG’ data, to find out
the pattern of data.
b. Testing stage: take 23 injection molding data,
including 19 ‘OK’ data and 4 ‘NG’ data, to test the
pattern constructed by the training data.
a. The preliminary pattern
Nine parameters were taken as the input variables of
decision tree, parameter settings are shown in Table 7.
The preliminary result is shown in Fig. 3.
b. The pruned pattern
The decision tree was pruned through the informa-
tion gain, so as to be effective anticipation knowledge
rules of data mining. The result is shown in Fig. 4.
As results, two classification rules explored by decision
tree are listed as follows:
A. Knowledge rule I: if mold temperature = +A (0–
5%), then class label = ‘OK’. The result is: 27 ‘OK’
and 1 ‘NG’, yield rate = 96.4%.
Content of rule: when the mold temperature is incre-
ased by 0–5%, the optimal yield rate can be achieved.
B. Knowledge rule II: if mold temperature = −D
(−15 ∼ −20%) and injection speed = +A (0–5%),
then class label = ‘OK’. The result is: 3 ‘OK’ and 0
‘NG’, yield rate = 100%.
Content of rule: when the mold temperature is reduced
by −15∼−20% and the injection temperature is increased
by 0–5%, the optimal yield rate can be achieved.

Ingredients
MI Value

Injection
Temperature

Injection
Packing Time
Time

Cooling
Time

Packing
Time

Injection
Time

Injection
Velocity

Fig. 3 The preliminary pattern of decision tree

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Mold Temperature
Injection Spee
Speedd
Fig. 4 The final decision tree pruned through the information gain
Using the effective rules obtained above, the model of
decision tree was to be verified by testing data. The
experimental results are presented as follows. The coin-
cidence matrix for predicted classes is shown in
Table 8.
A. In training stage, the accuracy rate of prediction is 97.6%,
and the error ratio is 2.4%.
B. In testing stage, the accuracy rate of prediction is 86.9%,
and the error ratio is 13.1%.
Model verification
For the sake of closing to actual situation, this study provided
two ways, rule verification and effectiveness comparison of
mining algorithms, to conduct model verification. The fol-
lowing shows the details.
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Injection Temperature
(1) Rule verification
In order to check whether the explored rule was effective
for mold tooling test personnel in adjusting parameters
of forming injection machine, this study used a set of
bad injection parameter data to verify the rules, and the
process is as follows.
a. Procure an example case of molding defective during
tooling test injection molding for case of improve-
ment suggestion (see Table 9).
In Table 9, the cause of molding defective is surplus
burr. The mold tooling test personnel would adjust the
parameters of injection molding machine and repeat-
edly tests according to expert experience and intui-
tion, until defective condition is improved.
b. Make adjustment suggestions based on explored
knowledge rules
Although the molding yield rate could be 96.4% by
adjusting the mold temperature, molding defective
J Intell Manuf (2011) 22:585–595
Table 8 Coincidence matrix for predicted classes
Predicted class OK NG Total
Real class
Training data
OK 35 0 35
NG 1 7 8
Total 36 7 43
Testing data
OK 18 1 19
NG 2 2 4
Total 20 3 23
problem could not be completely improved only by
adjusting the mold temperature parameter. According
to the explored knowledge rules I and II, this study
suggested the parameter adjustments as:
(a) Reduce mold temperature to 58–62.5◦ C
(b) Increase injection speed to 20–21 (cm/s)
As verified by the experienced experts, the above
suggestions are effective for adjusting injection
parameters in the process of mold tooling test.
(2) Effectiveness comparison of mining algorithms
This study compared the effectiveness of four classifi-
cation techniques, which are decision tree, back-propa-
gation neural network, combination of decision tree and
neural network and discriminate analysis.
a. Back-propagation neural network
This study used the back-propagation neural net-
work model of Weka software for construction of
single classifier based on 43 training data, and eval-
uated the classification effectiveness based on 23
testing data. The settings of parameter values are
shown in Table 10.
b. Combination of decision tree and neural network
Three nodes were selected from the decision tree
experiment as input variables of the neural network,
including “mold temperature”, “injection temper-
ature” and “injection speed”. The next processes
followed the back-propagation neural network.
c. Discriminate analysis The discriminate analysis is
to figure out the function when the attribution group
of group data point is known, which is most likely
to discriminate different group data points, and this
function is called discriminate function. The
attribution group classification of new data points
can be carried out based on this function. The
measurement method is as follows:
593
I. Hit ratio (training data) = samples discriminated
correctly /training data sample number
II. Hit ratio (testing data) = samples discriminated
correctly /testing data sample number
The random sampling was taken ten times. Table 11 is the
overview of the results of classification prediction.
(a) Comparison of accuracy rate of training data: the accu-
racy rate of training data of discriminate analysis model
79.8% is lowest, and other three classification models
are at the same level which is 98.4%.
(b) Comparison of accuracy rate of testing data: the pre-
diction model of combination of decision tree and neu-
ral network is best, the accuracy rate of testing data
is 91.4%; secondly is the decision tree 90.5%, and the
back-propagation neural network 90.0%, finally is the
discriminate analysis 72.6%.
The results of accuracy rate of four mining algorithms for
certain degree agrees with those of Lim et al. (1997) and
Liu et al. (2004). As for the classification model adopted by
the practical system in this study, the decision tree is known as
having excellent classification discriminating ability accord-
ing to the aforesaid comparative result, and it is able to pro-
vide clear and simple rules as the guideline for decisions.
Application of knowledge base system
The intelligent mold tooling test classification knowledge
discovery system developed by this study has the following
two major functions.
(1) Provide service platform for mold development knowl-
edge
In the present stage, this system contains more than 400
knowledge documents, ten knowledge communities, a
list of more than 40 experts, and two effective knowl-
edge rules explored through “decision tree” technology,
provided for companies of individual cases, two client
system factories and 120 partners as well as a knowl-
edge service platform for sharing, saving, search and
application.
(2) Provide simulation function
This system can provide a simulation for mold tooling
test engineers prior to practical adjustment of injection
molding parameters, so as to avoid cost and time wastes
resulted from failures of finished product injection.
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Table 9 A example case of molding defective

Mold no. Product name Record time Class label Defective cause Injection temperature Mold temperature Injection speed

WCL181501 2007/10/07 NG Burr 187 72.5 20

2005001 Injection time Injection velocity Injection pressure Packing time Packing switch Cooling time Ingredients MI value
1 45 47.5 1.75 6 21 30

Table 10 Parameter settings of back-propagation neural network validation of the system, this study took the only high-alloy
Parameter name Parameter setting steel manufacturer among the top 500 enterprises in Taiwan
as the case study, and classified 43 data of 66 mold tooling
test record data of injection molding machine as training data
Data collection period April 2007 to March 2008 and 23 of which as testing data. The data mining technique
Data mining algorithm Back-propagation neural network adopted was the decision tree algorithm. The experimental
Input data 43 Training data results showed that, the prediction accuracy rate of training
Module Training model data is 97.6%, and the prediction accuracy rate of testing data
Learning rate 0.3 is 86.9%. In addition, two classification rules of decision tree
Momentum factor 0.2 learning method were explored, and concrete proposals for
Maximum learning cycle 500 parameter adjustment were proposed according to these two
Number of neurons in hidden 6 (Processing units in input layer knowledge rules.
layer + processing units in output Moreover, this study provided two ways, rule verifica-
layer)/2
Input column 10
tion and effectiveness comparison of four mining algorithms,
Output column 1
to conduct model verification. The four classification algo-
rithms were decision tree, back-propagation neural network,
Class label Molding results
combination of decision tree, and discriminate analysis. The
Molding results OK or NG
experimental results indicated that, the decision tree algo-
rithm has an excellent classification discriminating ability,
and it can provide clear and simple rules as the guideline for
Table 11 Experimental results of four mining algorithms
decisions.
Data mining algorithm Data type Mean accuracy
rate (%)

Decision tree Training data 98.4

Testing data 90.5
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