The trend for product individualization results in a demand for small and more flexible production series with a considerable diversity of components. The improvement of manufacturing and assembly flexibility has a direct impact on the control complexity of the manufacturing tasks leading to big challenges for the quality assurance systems. The quality assurance strategy that is nowadays used for mass production is unable to cope with the inspection flexibility needed among small series production. The major challenge faced by a quality assurance system applied to small series production is to guarantee the needed quality level already at the first run (“first time right on time”). This demands a constant adaption of the quality assurance system behavior according to the dynamic manufacturing conditions, which can be achieved by the improvement of cognitive and autonomy aspects of the manufacturing systems. This work introduces the concept of Cognitive Production Metrology as an ...
