Holonic quality control strategy for the process chain of bearing rings

In a process chain, workpiece quality features may be affected by several sub-processes. Hence, an optimisation of quality features throughout the process chain requires a process-wide approach, which also adapts the flexibility concerning the arrangement of the sub-processes. This paper presents a holonic control strategy for a process-wide optimisation of selected workpiece quality features. In particular, the modelling and optimisation procedure are designed such that a rearrangement or extension of the process chain involves no intervention in the control strategy. The approach is demonstrated along the production of bearing rings, regarding especially geometric quality features affected by distortion phenomena.