digital manufacturing

Due to the higher customization of products to customer groups and needs, body-in-white manufacturing industries are facing higher variant assembly at the later stages of the production line, thus increasing production costs per unit. Flexible production processes that involve flexible material flows, non-rigid manufacturing sequences, and the automatic reconfiguration of tools are regarded as the pillars of a resilient production system. This article presents a conceptual solution for flexible Body-in-White sheet metal production with autonomous collaborative robotic systems to make product costs affordable for a higher competitive advantage.

In light of the three major global transformations of globalization, digitalization and sustainabilization industrial production faces new challenges and targets. On the one hand industrial modernization in the direction of digital manufacturing (Industry 4.0) has to cope with the new protectionist policies that have started in the United States as a countermovement to globalization. On the other hand, the new vocal demand for climate protection and environmental quality assurance puts pressure on the industry to align its policies with the demand for ecological modernization. It is essential that industrial policy makers include not only efficiency goals as targets for their investment plans but also environmental quality and social compatibility. Keywords:

The environment of industrial enterprises is characterised by an increasing degree of complexity, dynamics, and uncertainty. To cope with the rising demands, companies have to produce unique high-quality products in a cost-effective and timely manner. In contrast, the current proceeding for product generation can be characterized by a wide variety of time- and cost-consuming coordination efforts by usage of physical prototypes. Non-continuous process chains are additionally decelerated by island-like software tools. Promising approaches to handle the challenges facing industrial enterprises are subsumed by the term Digital Manufacturing, which comprises the planning, integration and operation of product- and production-related processes in industrial enterprises by means of information technology (IT). In this paper, we highlight three promising areas of Digital Manufacturing, the support in product development by bridging the gap between product and production engineering, the ...

Digital manufacturing systems are too expensive and not capable to produce the expected benefit for the company. This prejudice about the digital manufacturing systems is spread through out the most midsized companies. Because of the complexity of this new technology especially in its impacts to the company this prejudice is difficult to disprove. The IPA method DigiPlan-Check offers an efficient method for a fast picture of the company’s potentials. Based on these potentials a selection of digital manufacturing system components is possible. The result are valuable experiences where and how the digital manufacturing system will deliver its benefit. And all this will be done while considering the individual characteristics of the company and not common sense.

The Virtual Production is a key element to the mastering of current challenges in the producing industry. Nevertheless in practice in many cases there exist deficits in the field of defining contents and of implementing a strategy regarding the Virtual Production. Therefore this article addresses - starting from a representation of the definition and the structure - the core areas of the Virtual Production. Subsequently the essential steps are illustrated that are necessary to realize the overall Virtual Production and to avoid isolated applications as well.