System and method for manufacturing system data analysis

A method for manufacturing system operation, comprising:

• receiving, from a manufacturing system, a data stream indicative of manufacturing process parameter values throughout a time interval, wherein the data stream is associated with manufacturing of a plurality of printed circuit board assemblies (PCBAs), wherein the manufacturing process parameter values comprise information indicative of a PCBA inspection metric for each of the plurality of PCBAs;
• determining a high-variance time interval during which a variance of the PCBA inspection metric is greater than a threshold variance;
• based on determining the high-variance time interval, generating a query associated with the manufacturing system such that the query is indicative of the high-variance time interval and of a first set of manufacturing process parameters, wherein each manufacturing process parameter of the set is related to the PCBA inspection metric;
• generating, based on the high-variance time interval and the first set of manufacturing process parameters, a set of histogram-preserving digests, wherein each histogram-preserving digest of the set is associated with a respective subinterval of the time interval and a respective set of manufacturing process parameters;
• receiving the query;
• and
• in response to receiving the query:
• based on the query, selecting a subset of histogram-preserving digests from the set such that the respective subintervals associated with the subset of histogram-preserving digests are disjoint;
• and
• providing a query result based on the subset of histogram-preserving digests.