Highly flexible forming technologies - approach for rising diversity of variants

Since the last centuries the sheet metal forming mainly focuses on the production of high lot sizes. As part of this process the deep drawing gained a very high stage of development. Forming technologies for small quantities, however, were less pushed. Since at least the 1990s across industries a trend for product individualization began. The variety of variants increased and the part-specific batch sizes declined. Especially in the field of sheet metal forming this change requires a paradigm shift. The paper shows which approaches the Fraunhofer IWU tracked specifically for lowest quantities and how it is possible to produce even the smallest lot sizes automated.