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Main Authors: Koronaki, Eleni D., Suntaxi, Geremy Loachamin, Papavasileiou, Paris, Giovanis, Dimitrios G., Kathrein, Martin, Boudouvis, Andreas G., Bordas, Stéphane P. A.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.19097
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author Koronaki, Eleni D.
Suntaxi, Geremy Loachamin
Papavasileiou, Paris
Giovanis, Dimitrios G.
Kathrein, Martin
Boudouvis, Andreas G.
Bordas, Stéphane P. A.
author_facet Koronaki, Eleni D.
Suntaxi, Geremy Loachamin
Papavasileiou, Paris
Giovanis, Dimitrios G.
Kathrein, Martin
Boudouvis, Andreas G.
Bordas, Stéphane P. A.
contents Important variables of processes are often categorical, i.e. names or labels representing, e.g. categories of inputs, or types of reactors or a sequence of steps. In this work, we use Natural Language Processing Models to derive embeddings of such inputs that represent their actual meaning, or reflect the "distances" between categories, i.e. how similar or dissimilar they are. This is a marked difference from the current standard practice of using binary, or one-hot encoding to replace categorical variables with sequences of ones and zeros. Combined with dimensionality reduction techniques, either linear such as Principal Component Analysis, or nonlinear such as Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection, the proposed approach leads to a meaningful, low-dimensional feature space. The significance of obtaining meaningful embeddings is illustrated in the context of an industrial coating process for cutting tools that includes both numerical and categorical inputs. In this industrial process, subject matter expertise suggests that the categorical inputs are critical for determining the final outcome but this cannot be taken into account with the current state-of-the-art. The proposed approach enables feature importance which is a marked improvement compared to the current state-of-the-art in the encoding of categorical variables. The proposed approach is not limited to the case-study presented here and is suitable for applications with similar mix of categorical and numerical critical inputs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_19097
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Implementing NLPs in industrial process modeling: Addressing Categorical Variables
Koronaki, Eleni D.
Suntaxi, Geremy Loachamin
Papavasileiou, Paris
Giovanis, Dimitrios G.
Kathrein, Martin
Boudouvis, Andreas G.
Bordas, Stéphane P. A.
Machine Learning
Important variables of processes are often categorical, i.e. names or labels representing, e.g. categories of inputs, or types of reactors or a sequence of steps. In this work, we use Natural Language Processing Models to derive embeddings of such inputs that represent their actual meaning, or reflect the "distances" between categories, i.e. how similar or dissimilar they are. This is a marked difference from the current standard practice of using binary, or one-hot encoding to replace categorical variables with sequences of ones and zeros. Combined with dimensionality reduction techniques, either linear such as Principal Component Analysis, or nonlinear such as Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection, the proposed approach leads to a meaningful, low-dimensional feature space. The significance of obtaining meaningful embeddings is illustrated in the context of an industrial coating process for cutting tools that includes both numerical and categorical inputs. In this industrial process, subject matter expertise suggests that the categorical inputs are critical for determining the final outcome but this cannot be taken into account with the current state-of-the-art. The proposed approach enables feature importance which is a marked improvement compared to the current state-of-the-art in the encoding of categorical variables. The proposed approach is not limited to the case-study presented here and is suitable for applications with similar mix of categorical and numerical critical inputs.
title Implementing NLPs in industrial process modeling: Addressing Categorical Variables
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.19097