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- Segeborn, Johan, 1972, et al.
(författare)
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A Generalized method for weld Load balancing in multi station sheet metal assembly lines
- 2011
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the ASME 2011 International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition IMECE2011 November 11-17, 2011, Denver, Colorado, USA.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Sheet metal assembly is investment intense. Therefore the equipment needs to be efficiently utilized. The balancing of welds has a significant influence on achievable production rate and equipment utilization. Robot line balancing is a complex problem, where each weld is to be assigned to a specific station and robot, such that line cycle time is minimized. Industrial robot line balancing has been manually conducted, based on experience and trial and error rather than mathematical methods. However, recently an automatic method for robot line balancing was proposed by the authors. To reduce robot coordination cycle time losses, this method requires identical reach ability of all line stations. This limits applicability considerably since in most industrial lines, reach ability differs over the stations to further line reach ability and flexibility.Therefore, in this work we propose a novel generalized simulation-based method for automatic robot line balancing that allows any robot positioning. It reduces the need for robot coordination significantly by spatially separating the robot weld work loads. This is furthermore achieved at a cost neglectable to line cycle time. The proposed method is furthermore successfully demonstrated on an automotive stud welding line. Moreover, algorithm CPU-times is a mere fraction of corresponding manual optimization times.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Carlsson, Henrik, 1979-, et al.
(författare)
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Automated Generation of Discrete Event System Simulation Models for Flexible Automation
- 2011
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Ingår i: The 21st International Conference on Flexible Automation and Intelligent Manufacturing. - 9789868729100 ; , s. 825-832, s. 825-832
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Flexible automation cells with rapid product changes are an important competitive advantage for industries today. These cells can increase a company’s productivity and thereby increase their profits. A flexible cell shall be able to handle different products with none or minimal changes to the cell itself. A powerful tool, which can be used to analyse and verify such cells, is discrete event system simulation. Problems such as potential bottlenecks, deadlocks, answers to "what-if" questions and the level of resource utilisation can be gathered. The drawback of discrete event system simulation is that the modelling task is both time consuming and difficult to accomplish. Furthermore, state-of-the-art discrete event system simulation tools that are used in the industry today are not suitable for flexible automation. If the production scenario is changed, e.g. introduction of a new product, the simulation and modelling has to be redone and this is both time consuming and tedious. In this paper a new approach will be presented that enables discrete event simulation models to be generated automatically. The models are generated from information retrieved from a PLM/PDM database system, which is shared among other engineering tools such as robot simulation, CAD and process planning. Hence, when the cell and the database are updated a new model can easily be generated. The database is also connected to the real cell so up-to-date data can be retrieved from the real cell. The model generator described in this paper was implemented and tested in a discrete event system simulation tool and showed promising results. With this approach it is possible to handle flexible automation cells more effectively in a process planning stage.
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