Analytical approach of determining job division in manual assembly systems

Abstract

Requirements upon modern production systems have changed considerably. One of the main results of these changes is that organizational improvements have become more and more important. In contradiction to this, the available approaches to support adjusted design of production systems in an early planning stage — especially regarding manual assembly systems — are deficit. Particularly, the consideration of process organizational effects by determination of the job division fails because the planning knowledge is limited to rather vague hints than based on precise planning rules. An analytical approach for the determination of job division in assembly systems under different goals has been developed to overcome this weakness. Basis is a parametric description of the important factors of the planning problem. Set up on this, a simulation-based investigation has been carried out to detect dependencies between the goal system and the assembly tasks. The result is an analytical approach based on regression models to determine a suitable form of job division for a clear-cut assembly task.