Feedback for process planning as an approach to intelligent quality assurance

This paper represents an overview of a first realization of a feedback system that provides for the flow of comments from the shop floor back up to process planning. It addresses the notions of the functionality of feedback, of a feedback data model and a system concept as well as the application of feedback in updating knowledge bases for enduring improvement of product and process quality. If such an update process is integrated into already operational feedback loops, the described functionality becomes part of a self-learning system concept.