While in the past tool making was able to differentiate itself from the global market through its own innovative strength, today it must differentiate itself from the market by increasing efficiency in production and reducing production costs. The heterogeneous use of the most diverse manufacturing technologies generates a high planning effort in the unique production and requires a process understanding across technologies. On the basis of this complexity, strong deviations of the predicted and actual processing times result, both on the individual technology level and across technologies. As a result, significant potentials are left in the production.

A possible solution is the implementation of adaptive manufacturing process chains, i.e. that in case of malfunctions, such as machine failure or rush orders, it is possible to reschedule across technologies. The expert group “Toolmaking” is dedicated to this solution approach in order to specify the core aspects to as well as the requirements for companies to develop a procedure for the implementation of adaptive manufacturing process chains.

The first findings are verified by members of the expert group using various use cases. The problems described require the systematic use and networking of efficient manufacturing technologies and resources to increase the predictive power using model and data-based methods and thus enable the implementation of adaptive manufacturing process chains.