Concept for Assessment of Manual-Assembly Technologies

Abstract

The global competitive situation and change to customer market results in shorter product life cycles and high variant diversity as a consequence of customization. Especially in assembly systems the increasing complexity forces manufacturing companies to enhance their flexibility. In manual assembly systems the worker and the use of his cognitive skills provide the required flexibility and knowledge to perform the assembly process efficiently. The presented approach deals with an integrated technology management concept for manual assembly. Thereby, a special focus is set on support technologies which are aimed to support the cognitive skills of the worker. In the first step useful technologies have to be identified on the base of a specific search strategy. As soon as a potential technology is identified, the technology investigation starts. Core element in the concept is an impact analysis to assess the benefit of new support technologies in a specific manual assembly system.

Industry 4.0 implementation sequence for manufacturing companies

“…Due to globalization, mass personalization, and saturated markets, manufacturing companies face a complex production environment characterized by rising quality requirements, steadily shortening product life cycles, and significant cost pressure on production processes across the entire value chain [1,2]. A more flexible organizational structure and the optimization and digitalization of production processes in the sense of Industry 4.0 are required to counter these challenges [3].…”