Peter Gröndahl

Standardised flexible automatic assembly – evaluating the Mark IV approach

The Assembly Systems Unit at the Royal Institute of Technology and IVF Stockholm has developed several Flexible Automatic Assembly (FAA) cell solutions over the years (Mark I, Mark II, Mark IIF and Mark III). The industrial reality, however, clearly points out that the basic notions of flexibility must be extended and be enhanced without increasing the complexity. This has led our research team to revise the ideas and solutions available for manual and automatic assembly, resulting in the Hyper Flexible Automatic Assembly (HFAA) project. The paper describes the driving factors behind the needs and objectives for the HFAA project, as well as how it will present a standardised set of assembly process‐oriented system components. The paper also describes the new Mark IV application. This industrial HFAA system is being developed in order to test the concept’s industrial viability. The HFAA concept will allow the user to start from a manual assembly station and gradually add assembly equipment. The basic concepts of stepwise automation, standard assembly machine and sub‐batch principle emanate from our previous research.

MARK III, A New Approach to High-Variant, Medium-Volume Flexible Automatic Assembly Cells

The MARK III FAA (Flexible Automatic Assembly) cell was designed to minimise the risk factors associated with FAA. This FAA cell is stepwise upgradeable and adopts the sub-batch principle and reversed material flow solutions. It allows for the assembly of products with an annual volume normally too low to justify automation. The MARK III FAA cell was implemented with the FACE programming and control system, a PC-based, modular programming and control platform for FAA cells. It enables the management of unpredictable order schemes and leads to very low programming costs.

Characteristic of a Proactive Assembly System

Competitive assembly systems must cope with frequent demand changes, requiring drastically shortened resetting and ramp-up times. Characteristics of assembly systems capable of rapid change are e.g. Flexibility; Robustness, Agility, and ability to handle frequent changes and disturbances. This paper proposes proactivity as a vital factor of semi-automated assembly systems to increase speed of change. Proactive systems utilize the full potential of human operators and technical systems. Such systems have ability to dynamically change system automation levels, resulting in decrease of time consumed for assembly tasks. Proactivity criteria for assembly systems are reviewed based on theory and industrial case studies

A process-oriented product design based on an assembly module platform

Increasing global competition, decreasing product lifecycles and a growing trend of outsourcing put new demands on the product design and the time to realise the assembly system. These demands calls for high flexible assembly systems, containing of standardised, process-oriented assembly modules, offering a robust process and high reuse ability of the equipment. To generate such a system a new concept for cross-functional development of products and the assembly system is being developed. The concept belief is that extreme and long-lasting flexibility cannot be achieved without a distinct connection between product design and the assembly system, i.e. assembly process knowledge must be structured. To achieve this, the assembly module platform (AMP) is being developed, containing all possible modules to assemble the products. The AMP is generating the module process description (MPD), which totally defines the process executed by the specific module. The design of the product can now be guided by the MPD, creating a process-oriented product design. Furthermore, the AMP-database is under construction, linking functions as economical evaluation tools, to compare possible configurations assembly costs and investments.

The MARK III flexible automatic assembly cell

Abstract MARK III is a new concept in flexible automatic assembly (FAA) cells and has technically evolved out of the MARK II concept. The MARK III FAA cell is stepwise upgradeable and enables a major reduction in the cost of feeders and programming. It is a hybrid cell, combining automatic and manual assembly. The cell consists of a railtrack-mounted robot and adopts the sub-batch principle. Developed in order to account for the assembly of a vast range of products and variants, the MARK III allows for near-zero changeover times. By incorporating free-coupled manual assembly stations, the stepwise automation of manual operations is supported. These factors permit the automatic assembly of products with an annual volume normally too low to justify automation. Likewise, MARK III offers excellent opportunities for gradual capacity increase. Furthermore, it can account for unpredictable order schemes. The MARK III FAA cell also adopts a new programming and control system (FACE) which enables a drastic reduction in programming costs. This paper describes the evolution of this FAA cell from research to industrial launch.