Digitized, networked optics production

The increasing demands on the quality of high-precision optical components mean that established manufacturing processes are reaching their technical limits. While individual processes can therefore hardly be improved any more, networking production machines digitally throughout the entire process chain offers high potential for meeting the tight tolerances in the optics industry and increasing the production output.
To gain these benefits, first, an infrastructure is needed, containing a flexible and module data structure to satisfy different requirements from the processes. Second, the idea of offering services such as initial data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) must be integrated. In this paper, we present a digital infrastructure, that contains data from the entire process chain of glass and polymer optics production including simulation, process and measurement data. Services to optimize the production process are integrated and provide an outlook on how AI/ML can be added.