Man-hour Prediction for Complex Industrial Products

Accurately predicting the cost is crucial for the success of complex industrial projects. There can be several sources contributing to the cost. Traditional methods for cost estimation may not provide the required accuracy and speed to ensure the success of the project. Recently, machine learning techniques have shown promising results in improving cost estimation in various industrial products. This study investigates the performance of gradient-boosting machine learning models and feature engineering techniques on a private dataset of metal sheet project man-hour costs. A comparison of distinct models is conducted, key aspects influencing cost are identified, and the implications of incorporating domain-specific knowledge, including its advantages and disadvantages, are assessed based on performance outcomes. Experimental results demonstrate that LightGBM and XGBoost outperform other models, and feature selection and synthetic data generation techniques improve the performance. Overall, this study highlights the potential of machine learning in metal sheet sampling projects and emphasizes the importance of feature engineering and domain expertise for better model performance.