Subproject T1: Construction Kit and Building Blocks for the Fast Improvement of Immature Processes

Professor Dr.-Ing. Jürgen Fleischer
Professor Dr.-Ing. Frank Henning

In this project, research is being carried out with the aim of developing a modular construction kit with building blocks for the rapid implementation of structural changes in a production process. Starting from an initial process instance P0, the elements of the building block must allow over-instrumentation with sensors and actuators as well as structural changes in the process flow.

The scientific challenges include a formal concept for the building block, the definition of a suitable granularity, the practical feasibility of the building block and the development of an information model to describe the building blocks. These information models must include machine-interpretable self-descriptions and composition mechanisms so that - in parallel to building a process with real building blocks - a digital twin of the process can be constructed based on the information models of the building blocks in a self-organizing manner.

A challenging question is also how to map the structural change proposals of process experts to the composition space spanned by the available set of modules/bricks. In addition, data-based process models, universal kinematics and parameterizable stamp forming process will be used to realize high flexibility in the manufacturing process. The additional flexibility will be used to test different levels of over-instrumentation at a test facility.