The growing volume of process data generated by screwdriving systems, combined with advancements in computing power, data storage, and algorithms, is facilitating the application of artificial intelligence in this field. Accurately detecting and classifying screwdriving errors is crucial for ensuring product quality, avoiding costly rework in manufacturing, and supporting sustainability by facilitating the maintenance, reuse, and recycling of screw-connected products.

In this context, machine learning approaches offer a promising alternative to traditional monitoring techniques, such as window-based methods or envelope curves. This study examines the use of deep learning techniques for anomaly detection and error classification in screwdriving processes.

The data corpus consists of multivariate time series capturing process parameters, such as torque and rotation angle. For anomaly detection, the embedding space of a vector quantized variational autoencoder was analyzed.

In terms of error classification, four different model architectures were evaluated. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of anomaly detection and confirm that deep learning models can distinguish between multiple error categories beyond traditional binary classification.

This extends the capabilities of conventional monitoring approaches, achieving accuracies of up to 100%. Additionally, real-world data material was examined in order to further demonstrate model robustness.

Overall the results indicate strong generalization capability and highlight the practical potential of the developed models for use in industrial screwdriving processes, eliminating the need for expert knowledge in error identification and significantly reducing manual effort and analysis time.