Development of a Coordinate Measuring Machine—Based Inspection Planning System for Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 represents a new paradigm which creates new requirements in the area of manufacturing and manufacturing metrology such as to reduce the cost of product, flexibility, mass customization, quality of product, high level of digitalization, optimization, etc., all of which contribute to smart manufacturing and smart metrology systems. This paper presents a developed inspection planning system based on CMM as support of the smart metrology within Industry 4.0 or manufacturing metrology 4.0 (MM4.0). The system is based on the application of three AI techniques such as engineering ontology (EO), GA and ants colony optimization (ACO). The developed system consists of: the ontological knowledge base; the mathematical model for generating strategy of initial MP; the model of analysis and optimization of workpiece setups and probe configuration; the path simulation model in MatLab, PTC Creo and STEP-NC Machine software, and the model of optimization MP by applying ACO. The advantage of the model is its suitability for monitoring of the measurement process and digitalization of the measurement process planning, simulation carried out and measurement verification based on CMM, reduction of the preparatory measurement time as early as in the inspection planning phase and minimizing human involvement or human errors through intelligent planning, which directly influences increased production efficiency, competitiveness, and productivity of enterprises. The measuring experiment was performed using a machined prismatic workpiece (PW).