Process Anomaly Detection in Cyber–Physical Production Systems Based on Conditional Discrete-Time Dynamic Graphs
Christian Goetz, Bernhard G. Humm · Applied Sciences · 2025
Various types of anomalies can arise in cyber–physical production systems, caused by either faulty devices or incorrect processes. Anomalies within individual devices can often be detected by applying machine learning techniques to the respective produced multivariate time series. While this data typically shows temporal and spatial changes and can therefore be efficiently utilized by models, detecting anomalies within the process is often more challenging, as process data usually only consists of events, binary signals, or changes in unique process states. Due to the low variance of data, existing anomaly detection methods struggle to detect anomalies effectively and accurately. To address this challenge, in this paper, we propose a novel concept for process anomaly detection based on conditional discrete-time dynamic graphs. Through the conditional connections of the graph, essential characteristics can be generated and utilized to effectively train machine learning models to detect anomalies in the process data. Identified anomalies can be related to the current graph, facilitating transparent and explainable detections. By evaluating the concept against process data from an industrial unit and achieving an F1-Score of 0.96 and 1 for the realized repetitive processes, the accuracy and effectiveness of the concept can be demonstrated.