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The heat transfer coefficient during the thermoplastic composite tape lay-up process is estimated using an inverse method. This paper presents a simple inverse method using the parameter estimation technique combined with a suitable thermal transport model. The numerical simulation of the proposed thermal model is implemented by the finite element method. A small-scale tape lay-up system is built and experiments are conducted to measure temperature inside the composite during the process. The inverse method retrieves the unknown heat transfer coefficients by solving an optimization problem, which seeks consistency between the measured and computed temperatures.