Automotive Paint Shop 4.0

Abstract

This paper focuses on the research and development of a new paint shop concept for the automotive industry, based on Industry 4.0 and Digital Factory ideas. The Paint Shop 4.0 project has been carried out on behalf of a German car manufacturer, in cooperation with ProPoint Sp. z o.o. Sp. k. and industrial partners. The main goal of this research is to reduce the primary bottleneck in the operation of a paint shop, which is caused by frequent changeovers of painting guns. A new type of sequencing problem is studied from both an algorithmic and a practical point of view. The original ‘Car Sequencing Problem’ focuses on determining the sequence before production starts, without the possibility of later change to this sequence. The new problem consists of real-time car sequencing using a buffer for the purpose of considering dynamic changes. Work begins with identifying and analyzing the causes of the emerging problem. Then, using tools like Virtual Engineering and Virtual Commissioning, the following tasks are performed: modeling of an existing production line with a buffer, model validation, and the development of methods to improve the sequencing process. Two heuristics based on a set of simple rules and one more advanced heuristic are proposed. Their effectiveness has been tested during simulations, based on real data, and compared with current industry solutions. The extensive computational experiments show that heuristics-based proposal outperforms the methods known from the literature in terms of in terms of matching to industry requirements. This indicates that it is possible to improve the sequencing effectiveness, and as a result a smart buffer control system is proposed. Validating the proposed solution in a virtual environment paves the way to implement the Paint Shop 4.0 concept in a real plant in the future.