Information technologies applied to the manufacturing of complex mechanical parts

The aim of the present paper is to report the use of information technologies to control and assure the quality of complex mechanical parts, in this case crankshafts. Three different automated cells are used for inspection purposes using Non Destructive Techniques (NDT): Automated Visual Inspection (AVI), a surface Roughness Measurement System (RMS) and a Dimensional Control System (DCS). Distributed control architecture allows integral quality assessment of the production process of valuable machined components. A suitable software subsystem has been developed for this architecture: a Quality Assessment Subsystem (QUAL), a Tracking Subsystem (TS) and an intelligent production Process Assessment Subsystem (PAS). A prototype has been successfully installed and is under evaluation in a production line belonging to Renault Industrial Vehicles (Spain).