Abstract

Advanced manufacturing is envisioned to be fulfilled by various cutting-edge technologies, making the production environment more complex and dynamic. To maintain production quality in manufacturing processes and increase system responsiveness towards faulty procedures, in-process inspection is an efficient strategy that manufacturers should consider adopting. This paper proposes a holistic framework for implementing in-process inspection in advanced manufacturing systems. It identifies four essential technical issues, including in-process inspection in advanced manufacturing, real-time process control through inspection feedback, human-technology interaction towards human-automation symbiosis, and responsive manufacturing system and operations management. These technical issues are analyzed from three levels of the manufacturing system hierarchy: the workstation level, the process level, and the system level. It further examines and elaborates eight fundamental issues to address the four technical issues.