1. Assembly system design and operations for product variety WRITTEN BY: S.J. HU, J. KO, L. WEYAND, H.A. ELMARAGHY, T.K. LIEN, Y. KOREN, H. BLEY, G. CHRYSSOLOURIS, N. NASR, M. SHPITALNI PRESENTED BY: SHAI BENARI & YEHUDA MOAS

2. Introduction  Mass customization has become a vast paradigm of manufacturing since the late 1980’s.  This paradigm seeks to provide customized products at near mass production costs.  This change offered to the consumers significantly more variety.

3. Introduction  Variety can be achieved at different stages of the product realization: during design, fabrication, assembly and so on.  Assembly is one of the most cost effective approaches to high product variety.

4. Introduction  This paper reviews the researches that has been done in the design and operations of assembly systems in support of product variety.  The paper also identifies opportunities for future research.  We will focus on three main topics in the paper:  Assembly representation and sequence  Assembly system design for product variety  Roles of human operators in assembly

5. Assembly representation and sequence  PFA – Product Family Architecture: A way to represent the different varieties of a final product.  BOM – Bill-Of-Material – used for show quantity, cost, manufacturing methods and etc.

6. Assembly representation and sequence  Liaison graphs – a tree-like shape graph that shows the connections between the given parts.

7. Assembly representation and sequence  Assembly sequencing plays a key role in determining the quality of the product.  The sequence can be represented by versions of liaison graphs.  It is difficult to explore choices of assembly sequences:  A small change in the design can drastically modify the assembly sequence.  A large number of assembly sequences to explore.

8. Assembly system design for product variety  Different system configurations -

9. Assembly system design for product variety  Assembly line balancing – Maximum efficiency in minimum time and cost.  Assigning the right task to the right station.  shorter production time.  Balancing for variety – changing a given line into a variety assembly.

10. Assembly system design for product variety  Performance evaluation - evaluating the line efficiency. Less waste more production.  Evaluation can be made using different methods, like virtual reality.  the goal in improving the performance evaluation is to reduced the need for physical experimentation.

11. Roles of human operators in assembly  In the past, workers in assembly lines needed to work at a machine pace.  Today, some assembly lines are fully automated and the workers are there as observers.

12. Roles of human operators in assembly

13. Summary Assembly is an important part of creating cost effective product variety. Significant research has been done in the subject of assembly regarding design and operations for creating cost effective product variety. But there is more to be done:  An enabling method for assembly system design is the development of assembly representation methods.

14. Summary  Consideration of none sequential sequences which may lead to simplified sequence generation and innovative system configurations.  Design of reconfigurable assembly systems by incorporating both machines and people can lead to cost effective system flexibility and scalability.  New assembly design methods for open product architecture and personalization design are needed to be developed.

15. Questions? Assembly!!