Exploiting data in smart factories: real-time state estimation and model improvement in metal forming mass production

Abstract Modern production systems have numerous sensors that produce large amounts of data. This data can be exploited in many ways, from providing insight into the manufacturing process to facilitating automated decision making. These opportunities are still underexploited in the metal forming industry, due to the complexity of these processes. In this work, a probabilistic framework is proposed for simultaneous model improvement and state estimation in metal forming mass production. Recursive Bayesian estimation is used to simultaneously track the evolution of process state and to estimate the deviation between the physics-based model and the real process. A sheet bending mass production process is used to test the proposed framework. A metamodel of the process is built using proper orthogonal decomposition and radial basis function interpolation. The model is extended with a deviation model in order to account for the difference between model and real process. Particle filtering is used to track the state evolution and to estimate the deviation model parameters simultaneously. The approach is tested and analysed using a large number of simulations, based on pseudo-data obtained from a numerical sheet bending model.