Towards Automatic Part Identification in Sheet Metal Workshops

Abstract

Pallets and forklifts equipped with Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology can be a suitable option for bridging the information gap between cutting and bending stages in sheet metal production. However, a decision on how tagged pallets can be assigned to their content needs to be made. In this paper, a reactive and a proactive approach for the near-automatic identification of parts on pallets after cutting are discussed and their performance is evaluated through a series of simulations. In both approaches, the nesting information along with the measured net weight of the pallets are used to determine the parts on top of each pallet. The influence of the alternative solutions problem on the performance is investigated for both approaches. It is concluded that the actual decision on the approach selection depends on the time that is required for each recalculation and each pre-allocation. Those times are workshop dependent and, therefore, a decision should be made for each workshop specifically.