Decision support visualization approach in textile manufacturing a case study from operational control in textile industry

Decision support visualization tools provide insights for solving problems by displaying data in an interactive, graphical format. Such tools can be effective for supporting decision-makers in finding new opportunities and in measuring decision outcomes. In this study, was used a visualization tool capable of handling multivariate time series for studying a problem of operational control in a textile manufacturing plant; the main goal was to identify sources of inefficiency in the daily production data of three machines. A concise rule-based model of the inefficiency measures (i.e. quantitative measures were transformed into categorical variables) was developed and then performed an in-depth visual analysis using a particular technique, the categorical time series plots stacked vertically. With this approach were identified a wide array of production inefficiency patterns, which were difficult to identify using standard quantitative reporting - temporal pattern of best and worst performing machines - and critically, along with most important sources of inefficiency and some interactions between them were revealed. The case study underlying this work was further contextualized within the state of the art, and demonstrates the effectiveness of adequate visual analysis as a decision support tool for operational control in manufacturing.This study was partially conducted at the Psychology Research Centre (UID/PSI/01662/2013), University of Minho, and supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education through national funds and co-financed by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-010145-FEDER-007653). This work was also supported by the following grants: FCT project PTDC/MHC/PCN/1530; FEDER Funds through the "Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade - COMPETE" program and by National Funds through FCT "Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia" under the project: FCOMP-010124-FEDER-PEst-OE/EEI/UI0760/2011, PEst-OE/EEI/UI0760/2014, PEst2015-2020 and UID/CEC/00319/2019