Fixturing-driven determination of multi-product assembly plans in the context of product variety and reconfiguration

Abstract

The design and use of assembly systems for more than one dedicated product becomes more important to manufacturing industries as product variety increases and lot sizes decrease. Since their introduction in the late 90’s, reconfigurable production systems have become a lever to enable those multi-product assembly systems. The question remains how can the needed reconfiguration degree be defined and how can be determined where in the assembly line reconfiguration makes sense. A new method for fixturing driven determination of multi-product assembly plans is presented in this paper to answer this question. It relies on LCS/SCS analysis of the assembly plan signature of a product variety. A case study is furnished to illustrate the application of the new approach.