Optical inline measurement is common in textile production, but not in the manufacture of some metal wire products using comparable techniques. The reason is that some ISO standards require highly precise measurements which are hardly feasible in the running production. Major factors for getting results of the aperture - the most important value in this respect - are the time needed to focus the camera, strong vibrations of the weaving machines as well as the light on reflecting surfaces and reference objects. Even in offline measurement, the comparability of the results is limited due to more restricted requirements especially in ISO 3310-1:2016 and ASTM E11-17 (test sieves). In these documents the conformity assessment methods have been updated on the basis of metrological recommendations. An ISO working group decided to pick up this issue and to look into the possibilities to improve the situation. That addresses the number of apertures to be measured, the coverage factors used as well as the overall statistics applied in the standard. Some research project are going to start accordingly in order to make the standards usable in the future.

Global economy increasingly responds to trends of industrial digitization and start to develop their own digitalization strategies e.i. through application of Industry 4.0 concepts. Thereby, initiatives and developments are often carried out on a company-, industry- or country-level, which can result in a lack of international co-operation and utilization of synergy-effects. To analyse the Industry 4.0 development status on a macro level and to enhance transnational developments, in the first part of this study we introduce the national Industry 4.0 platforms of three EU member states – the frontrunner Germany, the solidly rising Austria and Hungary that is in the process of catching up. Our analysis are carried out in four dimensions: economic background, country- specific Industry 4.0 interpretation, and local platforms as well as initiatives. To analyse the actual Industry 4.0 development status of industrial enterprises and of development platforms, existing Industry 4.0 maturity models form all three countries are presented and compared. Our analysis helped to capture the different phases of digitization and Industry 4.0 in Germany, Austria and Hungary in regard to defined goals and strategies and further of resulting problems with respect to Industry 4.0. Building on our comparison-studies and captured problems, decision makers should be enabled to carry out transnational Industry 4.0 projects and initiatives more effectively.

The following three research fields and levels can be identified in the field of production planning and control (PPC): production planning, production scheduling and production control. These topics were thoroughly investigated from different points of view by several authors in the recent years. However, the connection and interaction of these fields in the era of cyber-physical production systems (CPPS) has not received so many attention from the research community. The objective of this conceptual paper is to overview the current status of these fields; to examine the possible connection possibilities considering the different artificial intelligence solutions developed for the separate fields and to give an outlook regarding future research activities in PPC in the context of industry 4.0.

Incremental Sheet Forming is a prosperous process to manufacture sheet metal parts that is well adapted for prototypes or small batch production. Compared to traditional sheet forming technologies this relatively slow process is only profitable for the above mentioned production types but it can be used in different applications in automotive and aircraft industries, in architecture engineering and in medical aids manufacturing. In this paper indirectly obtained axial forming force on Single Point Incremental Forming (SPIF) of variable wall angle geometry were studied under different process parameters. The estimation of the forces on AlMn1Mg1 sheets with 0.22 mm initial thickness is performed by continuous monitoring of servo motor currents. The deformation states of the formed parts were analysed using the ARGUS optical strain measurement system of GOM. Interaction plot of forming speed, incremental depth, tool diameter and lubrication were also reported.

Since the last years of twentieth century the use of wind energy rapidly increased and it is imposed as one of the best alternatives to burning fossil fuels. Nowadays, in renewable energy resources, wind energy is the leading candidate for electricity production due to its lower investment cost and well-developed technology in manufacturing high-power wind turbines. Basing on a Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) analysis, this paper focuses on the use of a Wireless Mesh Network in order to monitoring several condition parameters to identify possible incipient failures analysing the health-status of the turbine. The objective of the RCM is to identify the appropriate maintenance task for each item. Condition Monitoring is one of the possible task choices and represents a cost- effective solution to minimize the plant downtime. The case study identifies the most critical components of wind turbine and propose a set of possible sensors that could be included in the Wireless Mesh Network to monitor the condition parameters of the turbine.