TY - JOUR AB - Purpose Driven by the development in sensing techniques and information and communications technology, and their applications in the manufacturing system, data-driven quality control methods play an essential role in the quality improvement of assembly products. This paper aims to review the development of data-driven modeling methods for process monitoring and fault diagnosis in multi-station assembly systems. Furthermore, the authors discuss the applications of the methods proposed and present suggestions for future studies in data mining for quality control in product assembly.Design/methodology/approach This paper provides an outline of data-driven process monitoring and fault diagnosis methods for reduction in variation. The development of statistical process monitoring techniques and diagnosis methods, such as pattern matching, estimation-based analysis and artificial intelligence-based diagnostics, is introduced.Findings A classification structure for data-driven process control techniques and the limitations of their applications in multi-station assembly processes are discussed. From the perspective of the engineering requirements of real, dynamic, nonlinear and uncertain assembly systems, future trends in sensing system location, data mining and data fusion techniques for variation reduction are suggested.Originality/value This paper reveals the development of process monitoring and fault diagnosis techniques, and their applications in variation reduction in multi-station assembly. VL - 39 IS - 4 SN - 0144-5154 DO - 10.1108/AA-10-2018-0174 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/AA-10-2018-0174 AU - Liu Yinhua AU - Sun Rui AU - Jin Sun PY - 2019 Y1 - 2019/01/01 TI - A survey on data-driven process monitoring and diagnostic methods for variation reduction in multi-station assembly systems T2 - Assembly Automation PB - Emerald Publishing Limited SP - 727 EP - 739 Y2 - 2024/04/25 ER -