BauFeSt 4.0 - Bauplanungsorientiertes Fertigungsmanagement im Stahlbau 4.0

The BauFeSt 4.0 project aims to establish a foundation for overcoming challenges in steel construction, including the shortage of skilled workers, cost and time pressures, through the use of flexible automation systems in assembly. The integration of robotic systems is crucial for competitiveness, but traditional approaches may lead to fit errors, welding defects, and production waste. Current handling of inevitable component tolerances requires complex measurement and information processing systems. The project seeks to overcome these challenges by implementing flexible process control through efficient tolerance capture and processing, applicable to both industrial robots and existing machines. The development involves defining information for seamless collaboration among different machines in steel production, focusing on measurement and tolerance information as well as process feedback. The project explores alternatives for storing and exchanging additional information from manufacturing processes. The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) and Web Ontology Language (OWL) are investigated for information storage and cross-domain exchange. The project outlines the necessary information for various manufacturing processes, emphasizing bidirectional information flow for quality control, evaluations, and optimizations. Real demonstrators, such as a robot-controlled drilling and plasma cutting, validate the developed concepts. The future focus involves further validating and developing the systematics for a holistic description of information and processes in steel production. The ontology-based approach allows integration of additional concepts and information sources, fostering collaboration for standardizing information transfer and data storage. These insights lay the groundwork for future developments in steel construction automation and digitization, enhancing safety, productivity, and worker incentives while providing significant added value throughout the construction value chain.

The research project was funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) via the German Federation of Industrial Research Association (AiF).

The project was led by Univ.-Prof. Dr. techn. Sigrid Brell-Cokcan and managed by Victoria Jung. We would like to thank all researchers Victoria Jung, Lukas Kirner, Christoph Heuer and our media-team: Simon Laprell, Marica Vitt.

Project Video

Dec 6, 2023