Towards a continuously improving composites manufacturing by employing the internet of production

In past years, the average amount of time a human spends on digital devices increased remarkably. This change towards consumption of mostly digital contents is driven by the increasing availability of data and the accompanying digitization of knowledge. Yet, data availability in composite production is still up to this day either scarce or non-existent, leading to error-prone and experience-based decision-making. This is due to only implicitly available and rarely documented know-how. Therefore, in this contribution we present our vision of a manufacturing concept, facilitating the continuous digitization and documentation of process, material, and design knowledge. The manufacturing concept is based on the idea of an Internet of Production, according to which artificial intelligence, expert knowledge, web technologies, and user-centered graphical user interfaces are applied. We realize our vision within the scope of composite process planning as a first proof-of-concept. In this context, research opportunities, the industry’s benefit as well as augmented applications and future challenges are elaborated.