Development of a New Method for Automated Selection of Robotic Mechanic-assembly Technologies Based on the Technical and Economic Criteria

A new method for the automated selection of robotic mechanic-assembly technologies according to technical and economic criteria was proposed. The choice is made on the known set of robotized mechanic assembly technologies, components of the system of technical and economic criteria, analyzed methods for depreciation expense of residual value of industrial robots and other organizational and technological input data. The content of the latter is: the period of operation of industrial robots in flexible production cells, period and volume of production, quantity and volume of product batches for launch in manufacturing.The process of selecting robotic mechanic-assembly technologies is performed at the minimum value of one of the user-selected technical and economic criteria from their pre-developed system. Each of the criteria with different degree of detailing reproduces the content of the «robotic» component of the cost of production of a product unit and is determined by using only industrial robots.The performed formalization of the selection process made it possible to develop algorithmic support, which underlies functioning of the developed computer program in the software environment MS Excel. The performance of a computer program was tested on the examples that on the set of the synthesized robotic mechanic-assembly selection technologies differ only by varying data on the organizational and technological features of using industrial robots in mechanic-assembly flexible production cells.The analysis of the obtained results showed that the selection criterion, determined by the use of the straight-line method of depreciation expense of industrial robots, regardless of the number of their useful years, is the smallest criterion for the examined examples under equal conditions.The mathematical generalizations were formed and the recommendations on using the methods of depreciation expense of the cost of industrial robot, which determine their residual cost when calculating selection criteria, were given.The method for the selection of robotic mechanic-assembly technologies is invariant in the context of the possibility of its use in different countries with different regulatory base concerning the existing methods of depreciation expense for determining residual value of industrial robot