Reflections on Visualization Research Projects in the Manufacturing Industry

The rise of Industry 4.0 and cyber-physical systems has led to an abundance of large amounts of data, particularly in the manufacturing industry. Visualization and visual analytics play essential roles in harnessing this data. They have already been acknowledged as being among the key enabling technologies in the fourth industrial revolution. However, there are many challenges attached to applying visualization successfully, both from the manufacturing industry and visualization research perspectives. As members of research institutions involved in several applied research projects dealing with visualization in manufacturing, we characterized and analyzed our experiences for a detailed qualitative view, to distill important lessons learned, and to identify research gaps. With this article, we aim to provide added value and guidance for both manufacturing engineers and visualization researchers to avoid pitfalls and make such interdisciplinary endeavors more successful.