Toward a Classification of Partitioning Operations for Standardization of Geometrical Product Specifications and Verification

Partitioning is one of the four major operations used in the international standards issued by ISO/TC 213 on geometrical product specifications and verifications (GPS, for short). The ISO GPS standards define both tolerancing (for specification) and metrology (for verification) practices that are of critical importance to manufacturing industry. Collectively, these emerging ISO GPS standards have the potential to be some of the key enablers of digitization of manufacturing (also known as smart manufacturing, cyber-physical manufacturing, cyber-physical production systems, and Industrie 4.0). In simple terms, partitioning operations divide a surface (ideal or measured) into subsets that are then subjected to further GPS operations. This paper addresses the classification problem of partitioning operations to provide a science-based solution for the development of ISO GPS partitioning standards. Such a classification is considered to be one of the first tasks that must be completed before detailed standards on partitioning can be developed.