Contribution to Computer-Aided Design of Flexible Assembly Systems

Abstract

In this paper, the authors present a complete stategy to design a flexible assembly system for any product. The basic idea is to divide the assembly actions in two classes; the dedicated ones ( specific of the product) and the positional ones ( specific of the assembly process). The proposed method includes an algorithm which generates all the valid combinations of the dedicated actions, in the form of assembly trees ; the awkward ones are then rejected by the introduction of some set of constraints. The remaining trees are then transformed by the assignment of equipments to its different nodes, which introduces the positional actions. A comparison of the different solutions is then achieved by the way of a simulation.