Tolerancing Informatics: Automatic Tolerancing Information Processing Throughout the Product Life Cycle

The management of geometrical part deviations along the product life cycle depends heavily on the acquisition, processing, and transfer of tolerancing information. While today this is performed with many manual interventions, new methods for automatic information processing in tolerancing and geometrical variations management will be required in the future to exploit the potential of digitalization paradigms such as Industry 4.0 and digital twins. Motivated by this, the present work defines the term “Tolerancing Informatics”, examines concepts and ways for automatic information processing and describes procedures for information exchange for next generation geometrical variations management.