In order to guarantee the quality and the productivity of a production system in a competitive marketplace, it is important to be able anticipate the changes in specifications of products and systems. The time limits in running productions, the complexity of manufacturing systems, and the diversification of components, are the challenges that human experts cannot handle without cognitive systems. Capabilities of cognitive Systems in observing, learning, and predicting the behavior and the evolution of the manufacturing systems make them special candidates for solving these problems. This mapping study provides an insight into the application of cognitive systems in the domain of production. We categorize different approaches and estimate their progress. We also discuss the optimizations and persisting problems and barriers. These representations can help in recognizing the concrete problems of the field. According to the results of our mapping study, Human-Machine Interaction and Knowledge Gaining/Sharing represents the largest categories of the domain. A gain in efficiency and maximized effectiveness can be achieved as optimization. The most common problem is the missing or only difficult generalization of the presented concepts.