A systematic strategy for the architecture design of collaborative and reconfigurable assembly lines

Current manufacturing environments have to face a competitive and evolving framework characterised by high-mix and low-volume demands. To properly deal with new requests coming from the market, Reconfigurable Assembly Systems (RASs) have to be designed. In this paper, we propose a methodology for the design of the architecture of a RAS, featuring both human and mobile robotic agents, and dealing with multi-product assembly of medium-light-weight products, originally assembled manually. In particular, a systematic methodology is proposed to define the number of workstations, specifying which set of operations must be performed in each one, and to design the system layout guaranteeing reconfigurability. To this end, the concepts of operation, datasheet of an operation, assembly tree, and macro-operation are introduced and formalised. Guidelines to automatise the required operations in a flexible way are also proposed. The method is applied to a use case where we define the proper number of workstations of a RAS to assemble several types of motorbike brakes, showing the reconfigurability of the system.