Expert Systems with Applications 39 (2012) 77887795

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Expert Systems with Applications

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/eswa

Comparisons between two types of neural networks for manufacturing cost estimation of piping elements
Orlando Duran a,, Juan Maciel a, Nibaldo Rodriguez b
a b

Escuela de Ingeniera Mecnica, Ponticia Universidad Catlica de Valparaso, Quilpu, Chile Escuela de Ingeniera Informtica, Ponticia Universidad Catlica de Valparaso, Valparaso, Chile

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
The objective of this paper is to develop and test a model of manufacturing cost estimating of piping elements during the early design phase through the application of articial neural networks (ANN). The developed model can help designers to make decisions at the early phases of the design process. An ANN model would allow obtaining a fairly accurate prediction, even when enough and adequate information is not available in the early stages of the design process. The developed model is compared with traditional neural networks and conventional regression models. This model proved that neural networks are capable of reducing uncertainties related to the cost estimation of shell and tube heat exchangers. 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Cost estimation Piping Neural networks Multi layer perceptron Radial basis function

1. Introduction Cost estimation is a key factor during the development phases of manufactured products. Early cost approximations as a function of a set of general characteristics help designers in decisions such as material selection, production processes and mainly morphological characteristics of the product. Studies have shown that the greatest potential for cost reduction is at the early design phases, where as much as 80% of the cost of a product is decided. As the design phase itself accounts for a relatively small percentage of the total development cost, devoting a greater effort to cost design is a reasonable and necessary step towards optimizing product costs. Making a wrong decision at this stage is extremely costly further down the development process. Product modications and process alterations are more expensive the later they occur in the development cycle. Thus, cost estimators need to approximate the true cost of producing a product. In addition, since cost estimating is the start of the cost management process and inuences the go/no-go decisions concerning a new product development, ideally, these go decisions regarding new product development or product design changes must be based on quantitative analysis instead of guesswork. Several techniques and methods for early cost estimation have been introduced in previous literature. Rush and Roy (2000) examine both traditional and more recent developments in cost estimating techniques in order to highlight their advantages and limitations. The analysis includes parametric estimation, feature-based costing, articial intelligence, and cost management techniques. Niazi, Dai,
Corresponding author. Tel.: +56 32 2274471.
E-mail addresses: orlando.duran@ucv.cl (O. Duran), jmaciel@ucv.cl (J. Maciel), nibaldo.rodriguez@ucv.cl (N. Rodriguez). 0957-4174/$ - see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2012.01.095

Balabani, and Seneviratne (2006) provide a detailed review of the state of the art in product cost estimation covering various techniques and methodologies developed over the years. The overall work is categorized into qualitative and quantitative techniques. The qualitative techniques are further subdivided into intuitive and analogical techniques, and the quantitative ones techniques into parametric and analytical techniques. Curran, Raghunathan, and Price (2004) provide a comprehensive literature review in engineering cost modeling as applied to aerospace. Three main quantitative approaches can be identied for cost estimation purposes. Analogy-based techniques: these techniques are based on the denition and analysis of the degree of similarity between the new and another product, which has been already produced by the rm. The parametric method: the cost is expressed as an analytical function of a set of variables that consists of or represents some features of the product that are supposed to inuence mainly the nal cost of the product. These functions are called Cost Estimation Relationships (CERs) and they are built using statistical methodologies. Analytical models: In this case the estimation is based on the detailed analysis of the manufacturing process and the features of the product. The estimated cost of the product is calculated in a very analytical way, as the sum of its elementary components, constituted by the value of the resources used in each step of the production process (raw materials, components, labor, equipment, etc.). Therefore, the engineering approach can be used only when all the production process and product characteristics are well dened. Thus, the application of this approach is limited to situations where a great amount of input data is available. Through a review of the cost estimation literature it can be observed that an incipient number of cases that use articial intelligence (AI) techniques have been reported. These techniques constitute the last generation of tools for manufactured

O. Duran et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 39 (2012) 77887795

7789

product cost estimation. The basic concept behind the application of AI in cost estimating is to imitate the behavior of human experts when determining the main variables that rule (and in what extend they do) the nal cost of a manufactured product. Thus far, the most common AI technique in cost estimation is the case based reasoning. This technique is similar, in essence, to the analogy-based technique. AI techniques allow modeling, storing and re-using information and capturing the relative knowledge on products yet produced for adapting it to new situations, i.e. new products under development. Graham and Smith (2004) proposed the case-based estimator (CBE), which is a small model, consisting of ve input features, one output and a small case base. According to the authors, an experiment was performed to assess the ability of two retrieval mechanisms (one a simple mathematical formula, the other, an adaptation of the ID3 decision tree generating algorithm) to measure similarity. The simple formula was found to be more preferable, both in terms of consistency and development effort. Another case based system for the cost estimation is presented by Ficko, Drstvensek, Brezocnik, Balic, and Vaupotic (2005), who suggested an intelligent system for predicting the total cost of stamping tools. The work is limited to tools to manufacture sheet metal products by stamping. On the basis of target and source cases, the system prepares the prediction of costs. The results show that the quality of predictions made by the intelligent system is comparable to the quality assured by the experienced expert. Articial neural networks (ANN) have been the most explored AI based technique in research on cost estimation. Neural networks, as non-parametric approximators attempt to t curves through data without providing a predetermined function with free parameters. Neural networks are therefore able to detect hidden functional relationships between product attributes and cost, i.e. relationships unknown to the cost engineer. Bode (2000) investigates the potential of neural networks to support cost estimation at the early stage of product development. The cost estimation performance is compared to conventional methods, i.e. linear and non-linear parametric regression. Neural networks achieve lower deviations in their cost estimations. Cavalieri, Maccarrone, and Pinto (2004) reported the results of the comparison of the application of two different approaches, parametric and articial neural network techniques, for the estimation of the unitary manufacturing costs of a new type of brake disks produced by an Italian manufacturing rm. Kim and Han (2003) proposed hybrid articial intelligence techniques to resolve cost estimation problems. Genetic algorithms are used to identify optimal or near-optimal cost drivers. In addition, articial neural networks are employed to allocate indirect costs with non-linear behavior to the products. Empirical results show that the proposed model outperforms the conventional model. Some applications of ANN, not properly in cost estimation but in cost driver estimation in Activity based Costing (ABC), are reported in the literature. Kim, Seo, and Kang (2005) applied hybrid models of neural networks and genetic algorithms (GA) to cost estimation of residential buildings to predict preliminary cost estimates. Kwang-Kyu, Seo, and Ahn (2006) presented a learning algorithm based estimation method for the maintenance cost as life cycle cost of product concepts. Seo, Park, Jang, and Wallace (2002) explore an approximate method for providing the preliminary life cycle cost. Learning algorithms trained to use the known characteristics of existing products allow the life cycle cost of new products to be promptly approximated during the conceptual design phase without the overhead of dening new life cycle costing (LCC) models. Articial neural networks were trained to generalize product attributes and life cycle cost data from pre-existing LCC studies. Because of this approach, there is still considerable uncertainty within the estimate that can affect the nal result. One approach involves applying fuzzy sets and fuzzy reasoning to modeling situations using linguistic variables. With this approach, called fuzzy logic, it is possible to handle the uncertainty in cost estimation problems that cannot be

addressed by the traditional techniques. This uncertainty results from a sort of tolerance for human imperfection when transferring ideas or information as the casting of opinions. Shehab and Abdalla (2002) proposed an intelligent knowledge-based system for product cost modeling. The developed system has the capability of selecting a material, as well as machining processes and parameters based on a set of design and production parameters; and also estimating the product cost throughout the entire product development cycle, including the assembly cost. The proposed system is applied with no need for detailed design information, so that it can be used at an early design stage. The system has been validated through a case study. Other proposals include the use of non-traditional techniques for cost estimation. Koonce, Judd, Sormaz, and Masel (2003) present the design and implementation of a customizable cost integration tool to support design time optimization that considers cost as an objective function or constraint. Giachetti and Arango (2003) reported an activity-based printed circuit board (PCB) cost estimation model. The proposed model estimates PCB cost based on design parameters. The activities are dened so that the design decisions become the cost drivers and thus enable the cost estimation model to be utilized early in the design process, when sufcient time remains to make design changes. Ozbayrak, Akgun, and Turker (2004) discussed the implementation of the activity based costing (ABC) approach along with a mathematical and simulation model to estimate the manufacturing and product cost in an automated manufacturing system. ABC was used to model the manufacturing and product costs. An extensive analysis has been carried out to calculate the product costs under these two strategies. The comparison between the two strategies, in terms of effects on the manufacturing and product costs, is carried out to highlight the difference between them. Hmidaa et al. (2006) introduces the new concept of cost entity and suggested two models, a product model and a Costgrammes model. The cost estimating reasoning procedure that takes into account alternative process plans of a product is modeled and solved by a constraint satisfaction problem (CSP). In Ou-Yang and Lin (1997) a framework for estimating the manufacturing cost in terms of a feature-based approach is proposed. This system tends to estimate the manufacturing cost of a design according to the shapes and precision of its features. The approach integrates a featurebased CAD model and a database-storing product and process cost. Murat Gnaydn and Zeynep Dogan (2004) applied neural networks in early cost estimations for structural systems of building. The mentioned authors performed a sensitivity analysis to obtain feedback as to which input parameters are more signicant in terms of the effect that each network input parameter has on the network output. Verlinden, Duou, Collin, and Cattrysse (2008) compared two approaches for cost estimation in sheet metal part manufacturing. They used regression and articial neural networks for dening cost estimation models. Despite the differences between the regression model and the neural network are small, the ANN yields better results. Cos, Sanchez, Ortega, and Montequin (2008) compared the results of the application of a non-parametric regression model and an ANN approach for cost estimating of metallic components for the aerospace industry. Most recently Che (2010) used a PSO based approach in training an articial neural network for cost estimating of plastic injection molding. Several comparisons were made, which showed that the so-called FAPSO-TBP estimation approach can be considered as very competitive.

2. Piping manufacturing A pipe is a tubular section or hollow cylinder used mainly to convey substances which can ow uids, slurries, powders and masses. Pipe manufacturing refers to how the individual pieces of pipe are made. Each piece of piping produced is called a joint

7790

O. Duran et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 39 (2012) 77887795

or a length. Generally, pipe is shipped to the pipeline construction site as double joints, where two pieces of pipe are pre-welded together to save time. Most of the piping elements is seamless or longitudinally welded, although spirally welded pipe is common for larger diameters. The most typical piping elements are suitable for carbon steel, various alloys steel and stainless steel. The most used welding methods are TIG, MIG and SAW. Fig. 1 shows examples of spooling parts. For cost estimation, the most common methods consider historical databases. Through the use of this type of information many engineers prepare detailed denitive cost estimates. Three methods are available for estimating the relationship between the cost and the characteristic parameters: Engineering (subjective) estimates, Account analysis and Statistical (regression) analysis. These methods yield in low condence intervals and the obtained estimations cannot be considered as useful in a general way. 3. Estimators of proposed costs In this section three cost estimating models are presented, known as multi layer perceptron neural network (MLPNN), radial basis function (RBFNN) and linear multivariate regression (MR). 3.1. MLP neural network The neural estimator output is obtained as:

the parameter l is increased or reduced along each learning stage [Ref-LM]. 3.2. RBF neural network The RBF neural network is similar to MLPNN; however, the activation function is replaced by a radial-base function and the output of the neural network is given by:

m X j 1

cj /j v i;j ; xi

/j xi /kxi v ji k2 1 /u p 1u 5

where vj represents the non-linear weights and cj represents the linear weights. Linear weights are obtained using the Least Square Method of the residual square sum, such as:

^ c UT U? X

m X j 1

where ()\ is the pseudo-reverse matrix of [Ref-MP] of the hidden layer of the RBFNN. When the linear parameters are obtained, the non-linear weights {vji} are then estimated using the algorithm (LM) given in Section 3.1.

bj /j wi;j ; xi

1
3.3. Linear multivariate regression The linear cost estimator is obtained using the following linear regression equation:

where bj represents the linear weight and wji is the non-linear weight of MLPNN. The activation function /j is then dened by:

/j xi /

p X i1

wji xi

m X i1

ai xi

1 /x 1 expx
where p is the number of input variables of the MLPNN. In order to estimate the linear and non-linear parameters h = {bj, wji} of MLPNN, the LevenbergMarquardt (LM) algorithm is used. This algorithm adapts the parameters using the following expressions:

where the value of ai represents the parameters obtained as:

^ AT A ? X a A aji ; j 1; . . . ; N and i 1; . . . ; m

4. Methodology 4.1. Hypothesis

hk 1 hk Dh

Dhk JJ T lI1 Eh N 1X di yi 2 Eh 2 i 1

where N denotes the sample Lumber of the learning process, di is the expected value for the cost estimation, J represents the Jacobian matrix of the error vector assessed in h, I is the identity matrix and

The main hypothesis of this research is that by using neural networks based techniques is possible to develop costs estimation models that perform better (by being more accurate) than the traditional cost estimation techniques (regression based models). Through experimentation and using actual data these models will be used to provide answer to the following research questions:

Fig. 1. Appearance of spooling products.

O. Duran et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 39 (2012) 77887795

7791

Does incomplete information represent an impediment to effective product costs estimations? Can a very small set of product characteristics be used for cost estimation using soft computing based methods? 4.2. Experiments An actual case of a manufacturer of piping elements was considered to test the developed models. In this case, it was pretended that a company wanted to estimate the manufacturing cost of a new piping element during its design stage. The experiment presupposed that manufacturing costs of all similar elements follow the same single cost function, so that costs are completely determined by the product attributes known at the time of cost estimation. Three types of models were dened for the comparison: Models based on multiple linear regressions. Models based on Sigmoid Neural Networks (MLP NLS:: Levemberg Marquard). Models based on Radial-Based Neural Networks with alg. Learning based on SNLS. Further on in this paper, a structured methodology aimed to obtain a cost estimation model will be applied, which will be used in a specic situation, i.e. the presupposition of a high technology piping manufacture that will be used in uid transport projects by the mining industry. The suggested methodology involves a sequence of actions that may generally be summarized as follows. 4.3. Phase I: PRE-PROCESS The database obtained from a manufacturer of piping elements for the transport of uids for the large-scale mining industry includes the following elds: Item Name Identication Code Diameter (inches) Welding Class difculty (degree) Cavities (Number of ORings) Weight (kg)

Table 1 Correlation coefcients in descending order. Parameter 1 2 3 4 5 6 Weight Welding type Diameter Difculty Cavities Class Pearson coefc. 0.93 0.77 0.71 0.68 0.35 0.10

Table 2 Multicolinearity among parameters. COV MATRIX Diameter Welding type Difculty Weight Diameter 1.0000 0.7432 0.9697 0.6650 Welding type 0.7432 1.0000 0.7238 0.7233 Difculty 0.9697 0.7238 1.0000 0.6669 Weight 0.6650 0.7233 0.6669 1.0000

Table 3 Accumulated multicolinearity among parameters. No order 1 2 3 4 Parameter Dimeter Difculty Welding Weight

R Multicolinearity
3.3780 3.3605 3.1903 3.0552

Decision Eliminate Select Select Select

The input parameter selection is rstly done (independent variables), a process that consists of identifying the closely correlated parameters (Pearson Coefcient) with the output variable, i.e. the cost. The analysis of the resulting coefcient allows discriminating within the less related parameters inside the sought variable. For the decision-making process, Table 1 was developed, which has been arranged in a descending order with the values of the correlation coefcients obtained for each parameter. The elimination of the last two parameters, Cavities and Class, seems obvious and the lack of connection with the total manufacture cost results quite apparent. The next step is to analyse the multicolinearity among the parameters; thus, the Covariance matrix in Table 2 is shown. It may be observed the diagonal shows the existing correlation between each parameters and its own auto-correlation, therefore this value is 1 (100% of correlation) and the remaining values are variant (cross-correlation). Table 3 shows the accumulated correlations in a decreasing order. The value identied as R Multicolinearity corresponds to the total obtained from the four correlations among the parameters;

therefore, the parameter to be eliminated can be discriminated (Diameter). Its high correlation (Diameter) may be explained considering that its signicance is probably contained in another parameter. This presents certain logic when the Difculty parameter is taken as a reference, where it may be inferred the higher the diameter the piece to be manufactured, the higher the difculty degree involved in its maneuver and construction. Then, the data set is divided into two parts: a training data set and a test data set. The training data is rstly used to choose the parameters or to train the Developer models. The test data is for validation purposes. Both groups become standardized in such manner all values level at the range (0.1). It avoids the larger value input variables dominating smaller values inputs and avoids numerical difculties during calculation. This hence reduces prediction errors. 4.4. Phase II: calibrating or training the NNs A set of congurations of neural networks for both types of networks (MLP and RBF), for cost estimation during early design stages in a make to order production scenario were dened and tested. The performance of the different congurations and training strategies used in this research was compared and tested. In a number of experiments, neural networks were trained and applied to the set of train data. The accuracy of the cost estimation results and other indicators of performance were explored. The metric used in this comparison was the Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE), given by the following equation:

 n  At F t  1X   n i1  At 

where At is the actual value and Ft is the predicted value. Since there is no rule to determine the best congurations of NN, the number of nodes in the hidden layer was determined by a set of trials. Therefore, the neural network model were determined empirically, rather than derived theoretically. The proper

7792

O. Duran et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 39 (2012) 77887795

Table 4 Results with the neural network (MLP + LM) and (RBF + SNLS). MLP Test number 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Nodes in hidden layer 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 MAPE 11.0268 9.9753 10.4452 7.6372 7.5514 7.0654 8.1934 6.2542 6.1097 6.0094 5.3607 5.3912 5.1142 6.6281 5.6738 5.7192 5.4238 5.1687 5.3993 5.2629 RBF Test number 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 Nodes in hidden layer 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 MAPE

1.4 1.2 1
13.3283 13.3240 11.1037 10.9737 10.7229 10.5917 10.7837 9.7388 9.0044 8.9866 9.2657 8.7523 8.3152 8.8591 8.8484 8.4352 8.5351 8.7823 9.1130 8.3305

Estimated (E)

0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 -0.2

Ideal A=E Best Linear Fit Data Points

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5 0.6 Actual (A)

0.7

0.8

0.9

Fig. 2. Scatterplot of actual versus predicted costs for the regression model.

1 0.9

structure has been selected after having tested 20 ANN congurations with one hidden layer, and different numbers of nodes in the hidden layer. Each conguration was run 30 times. The Results are shown in Table 4. Table 4 shows the lower average of MAPE was obtained for congurations 13 and 33, respectively, although both networks include a hidden layer with 13 nodes each. Both networks will be regarded as Mlp(4,13,1) and rbf(4,13,1). A model of linear regression was developed for comparison purposes, considering the same input variables used in the development of the neural network models. Fig. 2 shows the scatterplot of actual versus predicted costs for the regression model. Fig. 3 plots the comparisons between simulated and real values of the testing set using the regression model. Fig. 4 presents the residuals versus the predicted costs obtained by the regression model. The linear regression model showed the following performance results: RMSE: 0.0785; R-square: 0.8812 and MAPE: 16.68. 4.5. Phase III: testing the ANN In order to test the real capacity of the networks and the selected congurations, and also determine the generalization capacity and statistical strength, the network with the test data group (those corresponding to 25% of the initial sample) is used. Fig. 7 shows the scatterplot of actual versus predicted costs for the RBF and MLP. It is seen that most of the points lie very close to the line indicating a strong prediction capability (for perfect prediction, all points should lie on this line). Hence, this chart provides the linear equation of the regression line (in the form of Y = Ax + B) between predicted and actual values. In this equation the closest to 0 is the B factor and the closest to 1 is the slope of the line (A factor), the better can be considered the estimation. Note that the correlation coefcient (R) is equal to 0.997 in the case of MLP ANN. Fig. 5a and b presents the residuals versus the predicted costs obtained by the two neural networks. Fig. 6 plots the comparisons between simulated and real values of the testing set using the MLP ANN (a) and the RBF ANN (b). Fig. 7 presents the residuals versus the predicted costs obtained by the selected MLP ANN conguration (a) and the RBF ANN (b). It can be observed that an important fraction (over 98%) of the 100 cases tested are acceptable with residuals ranging from 20% to 20%.

0.8 Normalized Mfg. Costs 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 Actual Cost Estimate Cost

100

200

300 400 Validation samples

500

600

Fig. 3. Comparison between simulated and real values of the testing set using the regression model.

60

40

20 Relative Residual

-20

-40

-60

100

200

300 Predicted Values

400

500

600

Fig. 4. Residuals versus the predicted costs obtained by the regression model.

O. Duran et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 39 (2012) 77887795

7793

(a)

1.2 1

(b)
Ideal A=E Best Linear Fit Data Points

1
Ideal A=E Best Linear Fit Data Points

0.9 0.8 0.7 Estimated (E) 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2
0

0.8 Estimated (E)

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.1
-0.2 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 Actual (A) 0.7 0.8 0.9 1

0 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 Actual (A) 0.7 0.8 0.9 1

Fig. 5. Comparison between test data and output data as scatterplot. Using (a) MLP and (b) RBF.

(a)
1 0.9 0.8
Actual Cost Estimate Cost

(b)
1 0.9 0.8 Normalized Mfg. Costs 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0
0 100 200 300 400 Validation samples 500 600
Actual Cost Estimate Cost

Normalized Mfg. Costs

0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0

100

200

300 400 Validation samples

500

600

Fig. 6. Comparison between test data and output data. Using (a) MLP and (b) RBF.

5. Result discussion A group of metrics was used to assess the characteristics of the results given by each network with the dened congurations. Such metrics are (Zemouri, Gouriveau, & Zerhouni, 2010): Mean Prediction Error (Ei) and the Standard deviation (std(i)) Timeliness Precision (std) Repeatability Accuracy. system performance are then processed on the variations of E(i) and std(i). On this basis, various performance metrics can be proposed. The timeliness is given by the global mean of all the M values of E(i):
M X  1 E Ei M i1

11

Suppose M represents the number of all the training/test running. For every running i of the training algorithm, a new value of the mean prediction error E(i) and the standard deviation std(i) are obtained for the n data of the test set as follows:
n 1X Bi ni j fj n j1 v u X u1 n stdi t Ei fj2 n j1

The perfect score is timeliness = 0. For a small value of the timeliness, the probability to have a prediction close to the real value can be signicant. On the contrary, if the timeliness value is important, the probability to have a wrong prediction is very high. The Precision is given by the global mean of all the M values of std(i):
M 1 X stdi M i1

std

12

10

where xi(j) is the jth output obtained by the ith neural model and z(j) is the jth system output. The measures of the prognostic neural

The perfect score is precision equal zero. For a small value of the precision, the probability to have predictions grouped together can be signicant. On the contrary, if the precision value is important, then the predictions are dispersed. The Repeatability is given by the standard deviation of both E(i) and std(i). A simple way to calculate the repeatability parameter is

7794

O. Duran et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 39 (2012) 77887795

(a)
50 40 30 Relative Residual

(b)
60 50 40 30 Relative Residual 0 100 200 300 400 Predicted Values 500 600 20 10 0 -10 -20 -30 -40 0 100 200 300 400 Predicted Values 500 600

20 10 0 -10 -20 -30 -40

Fig. 7. Residuals versus the predicted costs obtained by (a) the selected MLP ANN conguration, (b) the selected RBF ANN.

Table 5 Metric results for both networks. MLP RMSE R-SQUARE MAPE TIME-L Precision Repeatability Accuracy 0.0307 0.9751 5.5089 0.0152 0.0291 0.0037 20.8433 RBF 0.0381 0.9612 8.3152 0.0236 0.0378 0.0041 15.2674

accuracy. The second model, based on radial basis function, showed better convergence speed than the MLP. The approach solves the complex non-linear mapping for predicting the manufacturing cost at any phase of the design process of piping elements. References
Bode, J. (2000). Neural networks for cost estimation: Simulations and pilot application. International Journal of Production Research, 38(6), 12311254. Cavalieri, S., Maccarrone, P., & Pinto, R. (2004). Parametric vs. neural network models for the estimation of production costs: A case study in the automotive industry. International Journal of Production Economics, 91, 165177. Che, Z. H. (2010). PSO-based back-propagation articial neural network for product and mold cost estimation of plastic injection molding. Computers and. Industrial Engineering, 58(4), 625637. Cos, J. de., Sanchez, F., Ortega, F., & Montequin, V. (2008). Rapid cost estimation of metallic components for the aerospace industry. International Journal of Production Economics, 112(1), 470482. Curran, R., Raghunathan, S., & Price, M. (2004). Review of aerospace engineering cost modelling: The genetic causal approach. Progress in Aerospace Sciences, 40, 487534. Ficko, M., Drstvensek, I., Brezocnik, M., Balic, J., & Vaupotic, B. (2005). Prediction of total manufacturing costs for stamping tool on the basis of CAD-model of nished product. Journal of Materials Processing Technology, 164165, 13271335. Giachetti, R., & Arango, J. (2003). A design-centric activity-based cost estimation model for PCB fabrication. Concurrent Engineering, 11, 139149. Graham, C., & Smith, S. D. (2004). Estimating the productivity of cyclic construction operations using case-based reasoning. Advanced Engineering Informatics, 18, 1728. Hmidaa, F., Martin, P., & Vernadat, F. (2006). Cost estimation in mechanical production: The cost entity approach applied to integrated product engineering. International Journal of Production Economics, 103, 1735. Kim, K.-J., & Han, I. (2003). Application of a hybrid genetic algorithm and neural network approach in activity-based costing. Expert Systems with Applications, 24(1), 7377. Kim, G. H., Seo, D. S., & Kang, K. I. (2005). Hybrid models of neural networks and genetic algorithms for predicting preliminary cost estimates. Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, 19(2), 208211. Koonce, D., Judd, R., Sormaz, D., & Masel, D. T. (2003). A hierarchical cost estimation tool. Computers in Industry Archive, 50(3), 50. Kwang-Kyu Seo & Ahn, B. (2006). A learning algorithm based estimation method for maintenance cost of product concepts. Computers and Industrial Engineering, 50, 6675. Murat Gnaydn, H., & Zeynep Dogan, S. (2004). A neural network approach for early cost estimation of structural systems of buildings. International Journal of Project Management, 22(7), 595602. Niazi, A., Dai, J. S., Balabani, S., & Seneviratne, L. (2006). Product cost estimation: Technique classication and methodology review. Journal of Manufacturing Science and Engineering-Transactions of the ASME, 128(2), 563575. Ou-Yang, C., & Lin, T. S. (1997). Developing an integrated framework for feature based early manufacturing cost estimation. International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, 13, 618629. Ozbayrak, M. O., Akgun, M., & Turker, A. K. (2004). Activity-based cost estimation in a push/pull advanced manufacturing system. International Journal of Production Economics, 87(1), 4965 [8 January]. Rush, C., & Roy, R. (2000). Analysis of cost estimating processes used within a concurrent engineering environment throughout a product life cycle. In Seventh

Repeatability

rstd rE
2

13

The perfect score is Repeatability = 0. This parameter indicates how close the different values of the E(i) and the std(i) are grouped or clustered together. This parameter reveals the dispersion of E(i) and std(i) values. The accuracy is obtained from the three parameters and it gives a global appreciation of the prediction. A simple way to calculate accuracy is:

Accuracy

1 Repeatability Timeliness Precision

14

If a neural model has a good Timeliness, Precision and is completely Repeatable, the prediction given by this neural model is very close to the real data. The prediction condence is then very high. A big value of the accuracy parameter gives a great condence of the prediction. Table 5 shows the results for both networks of the previously mentioned metrics. Table 5 shows the best results were achieved by the Sigmoid MLP-type network. As it may be observed, the network based in the multi layer preceptron structure shows a better performance for all presented metrics, specially where the best prot are obtained for Accuracy of the model and its precision. 6. Conclusions Two neural network based models have been developed for early manufacturing cost estimation of piping elements by applying the principles of supervised learning. Both neural network models proved as capable of reducing uncertainties related to the cost estimation of piping elements. The rst model, a multi layer perceptron, showed a better performance in terms of precision, repeatability and

O. Duran et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 39 (2012) 77887795 ISPE international conference on concurrent engineering: research and applications, Lyon, France (pp. 5867), July 1720, PA, USA. Seo, K.-K., Park, J.-H., Jang, D.-S., & Wallace, D. (2002). Approximate estimation of the product life cycle cost using articial neural networks in conceptual design. International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, 19, 461471. Shehab, E., & Abdalla, H. (2002). An intelligent knowledge-based system for product cost modelling. International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, 19, 4965.

7795

Verlinden, B., Duou, J. R., Collin, P., & Cattrysse, D. (2008). Cost estimation for sheet metal parts using multiple regression and articial neural networks. A case study. International Journal of Production Economics, 111(2), 484492. Zemouri, R., Gouriveau, R., & Zerhouni, N. (2010). Dening and applying prediction performance metrics on a recurrent NARX time series model. Neurocomputing, 73, 25062521.