How additive manufacturing can shape an industry 4.0 environment

A brief introduction to Fraunhofer and IWU will be given, focusing on Industry 4.0 related research. The special approach for Additive Manufacturing (AM) as enabler for Industry 4.0 will be given, pointing out specifics of AM to support Industry 4.0 on the shopfloor. A two-fold approach for AM in Industry 4.0 will be explained: How can AM empower an existing production infrastructure for Industry 4.0? And how can AM itself be turned into a Industry 4.0 digital factory? Current results of applied research that support this two-fold approach will be presented, focusing on AM-empowered sensor and actuator integration in tools and dies and machine tools and on AM process monitoring to create a 3D product quality map of an AM manufactured product as a digital twin. An outlook on digital AM factories of tomorrow will be given.