Data based automated manufacturing control of fabricated components

Purpose and goal

The main goal of the project is to develop new methods and tools for on-line monitoring and control of a production operation sequence for fabricated components, with the long term vision of having a fully autonomous and self-optimizing automated manufacturing and fabrication production system. This “system” should be able to demonstrate the flow of data, data analysis and methods for process control and Root Cause Analysis, something that will be performed in laboratory environment. The goal is also to show and quantify the impact on quality, throughput, and cost.

Expected effects and result

With the functionality of the described system, systematic data management and process control for new and highly automated and adaptable manufacturing processes will be possible. This will be a radical and innovative step in how inspection and sensor data in production can be used to accomplish the desired quality at low cost. It is expected that not only production can be automated, but also simplified, or potentially even automated, Root Cause Analysis and capability evaluation (6Sigma) can be done.

Planned approach and implementation

The approach in this project is to handle the increased complexity that fabrication of aerospace components implies by applying concepts and strategies from Industry 4.0 and Digitalization. Both geometrical and sensor data will be fed back from all process steps to a database that also includes digital twins of the production system and produced parts. Having access to process and geometry data from all manufacturing steps will enable handling and analysis of variation in which downstream operations can be adapted to process outcome from upstream operations.