Adaptive assembly of large-scale products

Manufacturing companies are trying to meet individual customer requirements by increasing the number of product variants. The customization of products often takes place in the assembly. The assembly is also the last step in the industrial value-added process and is often affected by disruptions.

Disruptions in the assembly processes have a negative impact on the manufacturing company's logistical objectives and therefore their competitiveness. Due to the high complexity of assembly, a disturbance often leads to further disturbances. In addition, manufacturing companies are forced to reduce time, capacity and inventory reserves due to global competitive pressure and therefore can react less flexibly to disruptions.

For this reason, an approach to the production planning and control of the assembly is developed which describes the interdependencies of actions for dealing with disruptions to the logistical objectives.

production planning and control, assembly, possibility of disturbance, sequencing, simulation

Assembling large-scale products involves frequent process interruptions why in order to reduce the impact of interruptions, a short-term response is necessary to reduce delivery delays and idle times of resources. An approach to challenge this represents the flexibility of a production system. Regarding the environment of large-scale product assembly, it has to be shown which potentials of flexibility are able to be used in a short-term manner.

assembly, production management, disruption management

Assembling large-scale products involves frequent process interruptions. To reduce the duration of an assembly stop, the WZL of RWTH Aachen University and the IPH Hannover developed an approach which is able to identify alternative assembly plans and to evaluate them on the basis of the logistic performance objectives. Stock, capacity utilization, lead time and adherence to schedule are transferred into costs and assembly plans are thus comparable based on one parameter.

production planning and control, assembly, logistical objectives

Assembling large-scale products involves frequent process interruptions induced by e.g. delayed material deliveries or missing availability of resources. Our approach for identifying alternative assembly sequences by analyzing the product structure and process dependencies allows for continuing with the assembly process in case of interruptions and therefore increases the process efficiency.

large-scale product, adaptive assembly, alternative assembly process

The assembly of complex, large-scale products is often characterized by poor date availability, limited process standardization, frequent product modifications and flexible usage of resources, which often leads to interruptions in the assembling process. Therefore, in a research project between the IPH Hannover and the WZL of RWTH Aachen University, a methodology for assembly processes is developed which allows the identification and evaluation of process alternatives in case of interruptions. For the evaluation of those process alternatives logistical objectives are used.

xxl-product, adaptive assembly scheduling, interruption assembly process, logistical objectives