Math for the Digital Factory

The term Digital Factory represents the shift in industrial manufacturing towards the integration of all processes in the industrial value chain, sometimes also referred to as the 4th industrial revolution. Its main goals are

• reconfigurable, adaptive and evolving factories capable of small scale production
• high performance production, combining flexibility, productivity, precision and zerodefect
• energy and resource efficiency in manufacturing

None of these goals can be achieved without a thorough modelling of all aspects of manufacturing together with a multi-scale simulation and optimization of process chains, i.e., these goals cannot be achieved without mathematics.

MaDiFa brings together university mathematicians working in modelling, simulation and optimization related to manufacturing with practitioners from manufacturing industry. The general scientific goal is to develop a holistic mathematical view on digital manufacturing.