The demand for achieving smaller and more flexible production series with a considerable diversity of products
complicates the control of the manufacturing tasks, leading to big challenges for the quality assurance systems. The
quality assurance strategy that is nowadays used for mass production is unable to cope with the inspection flexibility
needed among automated small series production, because the measuring strategy is totally dependent on the fixed
features of the few manufactured object variants and on process parameters that can be controlled/compensated during
production time. The major challenge faced by a quality assurance system applied to small series production facilities is
to guarantee the needed quality level already at the first run, and therefore, the quality assurance system has to adapt
itself constantly to the new manufacturing conditions. The small series production culture requires a change of
paradigms, because its strategies are totally different from mass production. This work discusses the tight inspection
requirements of small series production and presents flexible metrology strategies based on optical sensor data fusion
techniques, agent-based systems as well as cognitive and self-optimised systems for assuring the needed quality level of
flexible small series. Examples of application scenarios are provided among the automated assembly of solid state lasers
and the flexible inspection of automotive headlights.
Micro-technology plays an important role in everyday life, without being much perceived. Cell phones, for instance, are
daily equipped with small electronic components, which must have their quality level assured. New micro-metrology
techniques were developed in the last years for such purposes. They are usually only suited for measuring specific and
individual object properties (e.g. geometry, roughness, contours). A multi-sensorial approach is needed to improve the
inspection range and flexibility of a micro-production cell, so that the distinct features of different industrial parts may be
inspected intelligently and independently of their surface properties. This work provides a basic review on some of the
most important "non-contact" micro-metrology techniques (optical and non-optical), performing a comparison of these
methods among their distinct capabilities and possible industrial applications/integration scenarios. Based on the already
existent sensor fusion principles, the MEOND concept will be introduced to build up flexible inspection systems for
small series production by combining sensors and data, focusing possible application scenarios of the micro-world. The
fusion of micro-metrology techniques has not yet been far explored and is extremely important to assure flexibility,
autonomy, accuracy and robustness for the assembly of MEMS/MOEMS systems.
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