Towards an Integrated Assembly Process Decomposition and Modular Equipment Configuration

Abstract

Abstract:In today's increasingly volatile and dynamic global markets it is mcreasingly important to react to changing market demands and reduce the time-to-market. The design and re-design of assembly systems has a significant impact on the product development time. This paper reports on the effort that has been put into developing an assembly process decomposition and modular assembly equipment configuration methodology that takes advantage of the current trend towards modular equipment solutions and is expected to reduce deslgn time and improve the design process integration. A general framework for the proposed methodology has been outlined and an ontology for the design of modular assembly systems is being discussed.

Review of semantic modelling technologies in support of virtual factory design

“…Ontologies are claimed to be serving this purpose. Some useful applications of ontologies in simplifying and maintaining consistencies in communications as applied in knowledge engineering can be found in the studies of Schreiber, Akkermans, and Anjewierden (1999), Ribière and Charlton (2000), McGuinness et al (2000), Horrocks and Harmelen (2001), Fallside and Walmsley (2004), Dean et al (2002) and Grüninger et al (2010); in manufacturing and supply chain systems engineering in the studies of Gunasekaran and Ngai (2004), Grubic and Fan (2010), Lin and Harding (2007), Lohse, Hirani, and Ratchev (2006) and Yoon, Shin, and Suh (2012), Chang, Terpenny, and Koellinga (2010); and manufacturing systems and distributed planning in the studies of Ratchev and Lohse (2004), Lin and Harding (2007), Ye et al (2008), Soares, Azevedo, and de Sousa (2000), Lohse, Hirani, and Ratchev (2006), Lohse, Schäfer, and Ratchev (2006), Adam et al (2011) and Chatterjee and Matsuno (2005).…”

Equipment ontology for modular reconfigurable assembly systems

“…Several design approaches have been developed that demonstrate the principle feasibility of computer aided and knowledge based assembly systems design (Bley et al, 1994;Boër et al, 2001, Travaini et al, 2002Lohse et al, 2006). The reported approaches only focus on some decision-making aspects and do not yet address the specific modelling needs for rapid RAS configuration and reconfiguration.…”