A decision making tool for reconfigurable assembly lines EUPASS project

A decision making tool is proposed to evaluate assembly costs of micro-products (< 1 dm(3)) and to compare different assembly strategies for a given product or product family. The tool takes into account equipment costs as well as running costs, for manual and automatic assembly. Its specificity lies in its ability to deal with different production mixes and production volumes over the life cycle of the product family. The underlying concept of the tool is that the cost of a given assembly function (or process) is constant for different technical solutions. This paper describes a cost evaluation for reconfigurable, manual, automatic or semiautomatic assembly lines, and shows its easiness of use through a simple test case

When manufacturing capability exceeds control capability: The paradox of high precision products, or is it possible to assemble functional products out of components we are unable to measure?

Sorting and mating is a very common practice in high precision manufacturing, as well in the watch industry, biomedical or automotive industry. This strategy helps to increase the assembly yield, but is costly and time-consuming. The question is, when is it necessary to apply sorting and mating, and when can it by avoided without loss in product quality? We furthermore show in this paper that the measurement precision is often lower than that of manufacturing. New and more precise manufacturing equipment and assembly devices allow for narrower distributions, and this raises many questions: is it possible to stop sorting? how can we be sure of the quality of the components and of the products? A case study at the company MPS AG, manufacturer of miniature ball bearings, illustrates this trend. We propose another manufacturing and assembly strategies, and show what the conditions are that are necessary to permit this approach