Smart Predictive Maintenance: A TCN-Based System for Early Fault Detection in Industrial Machinery

Modern factories still struggle with unexpected machine failures because traditional maintenance systems depend on fixed rules and threshold-based alerts. These older approaches often overlook subtle or complex patterns in multimodal sensor data, causing them to miss early signs of wear and leading to late or incorrect maintenance decisions. As a result, production can slow down, costs increase and equipment reliability suffers. To address this challenge, this study introduces a smart and interpretable fault diagnosis and predictive maintenance framework designed to detect wear, degradation and potential failures before they disrupt operations. The proposed framework integrates multiscale feature extraction, multimodal sensor fusion and cross-sensor correlation analysis with advanced temporal modeling using a Temporal Convolutional Network (TCN). By jointly performing tool-health classification and Remaining Useful Life (RUL) estimation, the framework provides a comprehensive assessment of machine condition. When evaluated on the NASA Ames milling dataset, the model achieved an overall accuracy of 86%, correctly classifying healthy and failed tools in more than 88% of cases and worn tools in over 75%, demonstrating consistent performance across different stages of tool wear. Explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) techniques, including attention-based visualizations and SHAP-based feature attribution, reveal that electrical and vibration signals are the most influential early indicators of tool degradation. The proposed framework exhibits low computational latency and minimal memory requirements, making it suitable for real-time fault diagnosis and deployment on industrial edge devices. Overall, the framework balances predictive accuracy, interpretability and practical applicability, enabling proactive and reliable maintenance decisions that enhance machine uptime and support efficient smart manufacturing operations.