The example of automotive body-in-white production is used to illustrate further potentials for automated fault handling in operative quality control. A review of pertaining literature on process modeling and control suggests some trends and future practices in research and industry. The paper discusses current results of a research project aimed at devising novel process and knowledge modeling concepts for online fault diagnosis and recovery. The proposed approach differentiates between three different tasks: fault recognition, fault identification, and decision and feedback. The paper thus presents a possible basis for future automation of fault analysis and recovery tasks in a variety of manufacturing environments.

On the part of the manufacturer as well as the user, the notion of modular configurable machine tools gains increasing applause. It is almost evident that the need not only for configurable machine structures but also machining characteristics will be an incisive feature of the future machine tool. In this paper a concept for a modular add-on solution for active vibration damping of characteristic mode shapes of a three-axis milling machine is introduced. Although the developed concept was tailored to a specific case, it is generally valid for small to medium size gantry style machines. Furthermore, the paper discusses the realization of the concept and the actuator integration into the machine structure. Also, a pragmatic controller design is proposed using a modal formulation of the machine dynamics. The results of the FEM analysis and simulation will be presented. Experimental validation of the system is underway at the time and is not included in the paper. A major advantage of the presented study is its suitability for direct application in the industry.