Proactive Assembly System : High productive assembly systems supported by skillful operators and appropriate automation

• Manufacturing competitiveness is highly dependant on the companies’ability to rapidly reconfigure their assembly systems. Ongoing efforts to approachself-reconfiguring and “emerging” assembly systems are promising but can besuccessfully complemented by integration of highly flexible human operators intosuch system models. This paper introduces the concept of assembly systemproactivity. The approach is based on interrelated levels of human involvement,automation, and information handling within the assembly system. Presently,assembly system developers react to the companies’ demands, thus developingsolutions, which are direct responses to existing problems, i.e. a highlyreactive approach. Assembly systems need to be more dynamic and evolvable tokeep up with the reduced product life cycles and still be cost efficient. Consequently,assembly systems with the ability to proactively meet emergent and long-termfluctuations concerning product design and volume capacity are required. Suchsystems consist of technical components efficiently integrated with human operatorsto constitute reliable resources in the production system. That way, disturbances canbe minimized and the availability of the entire production system increased.

Ämnesord

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Maskinteknik -- Produktionsteknik, arbetsvetenskap och ergonomi (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Mechanical Engineering -- Production Engineering, Human Work Science and Ergonomics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Assembly

Proactive

Human factors

Human perception

Automation

Realization

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)