Information Fusion for Decision Support in Manufacturing: Studies from the Defense Sector

Information fusion, the synergistic combination of information from multiple sources, is an established research area within the defense sector. In manufacturing however, it is less well-established, with the exception of sensor/data fusion for automatic decision making. The paper briefly discusses some military specific models and methods for information fusion; analogies with manufacturing as well as a more generalized terminology are presented. “Manufacturing” is an application scenario within a Swedish information fusion research program that studies information fusion from databases, sensors and simulations with (currently) a focus on support for human decision making. An area of particular interest is that of advanced applications of virtual manufacturing such as synthetic environments, a form of hardware in the loop simulation that can deliver services such as service and maintenance at remote locations. In this area, the manufacturing industry can benefit from ongoing work in the defense sector related to verification, validation and accreditation of simulation models