Tolerancing informatics: Towards automatic tolerancing information processing in geometrical variations management

Abstract

The management of geometrical variations throughout the product life cycle strongly relies on the gathering, processing, sharing and dissemination of tolerancing information and knowledge. While today, this is performed with many manual interventions, new means for automatic information processing are required in future geometrical variations management to make full use of new digitalization paradigms, such as industry 4.0 and digital twins. To achieve this, the paper proposes the term tolerancing informatics and investigates new concepts and means for automatic information processing, novel information sharing workflows as well as the integration of tools for next generation geometrical variations management. In this regard, the main aim of the paper is to structure existing tolerancing informatics workflows as well as to derive future research potentials and challenges in this domain. The novelty of the paper can be found in providing a comprehensive overview of tolerancing informatics as an important enabler for future geometrical variations management.