Proposal of Fault Characterization in Automotive Flexible Manufacturing Systems (Fms)

Abstract

Flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) have a high degree of automation, complexity and flexibility, making it possible to manufacture multiple models of products within the same manufacturing cell with few layout changes. In this environment, intermittent and/or random faults are caused by various agents. Consequences of such faults could vary from short production downtime to irreversible loss of planned volumes. Although there are several methods to identify modes of failures and the corresponding criticality, no methods were found to characterize faults with respect to its nature. The importance of such characterization range from manufacturing design to root cause identification. This paper proposes a procedure to characterize faults in FMS. The work is divided in an introduction, four sections and a conclusion. In section one the methodology is presented. In section two the theoretical background is developed. Section three presents results of a survey applied to collect data about the importance and understanding of the topic. In section four the procedure is described. Finally, the conclusions are presented as well as recommendations for future studies.