Metal Forming in Industry 4.0 Epoch: Challenges and Opportunities

Metal forming has been one of the main pillars of manufacturing industries worldwide, capable of mass production, yielding superior parts. Metal forming embodies a great variety of processes, methodologies, and machine tools that can be utilised in cold and hot work modalities. Industry 4.0 (I4.0) has become the norm in the contemporary manufacturing sector, aiming to integrate cyber-physical systems on the basis of improved communication and connectivity. The I4.0 platform uses the expertise of various engineering fields such as mechanical, electrical, computer, mechatronics, and software engineering, leading to a multidisciplinary systems thinking that not only plays a role in the development of new technologies, but also in generating novel business models and approaches. Hot research and implementation topics such as internet of things, cyber-physical systems, communication technologies, intelligent machinery, sensor technologies, and big data are some key concepts that contribute to the successful implementation of I4.0. In the current Industry 4.0 epoch, metal forming presents various challenges due to the variety of manufacturing systems, materials, products, machine tools, and systems; high cost and low resilience nature of the majority of the processes; probable dynamic changes in friction / lubrication conditions, material properties, and elastic deformations in machines / tools / dies, and also diverse organisational structures and varying company sizes. This chapter aims to address the challenges and opportunities associated with metal forming in the era of Industry 4.0.