The example of automotive body-in-white production is used to illustrate further potentials for automated fault handling in operative quality control. A review of pertaining literature on process modeling and control suggests some trends and future practices in research and industry. The paper discusses current results of a research project aimed at devising novel process and knowledge modeling concepts for online fault diagnosis and recovery. The proposed approach differentiates between three different tasks: fault recognition, fault identification, and decision and feedback. The paper thus presents a possible basis for future automation of fault analysis and recovery tasks in a variety of manufacturing environments.