Design for automatic Assembly – A systematic literature review to assess the fitness of sub-components for automation

Abstract

The automotive industry is in transition towards zero-emission mobility. New technologies, vehicle architectures and components are required for this disruptive transformation, which poses major challenges to the entire supply chain. One of these challenges is introducing new manufacturing processes within a very price-sensitive market environment. In addition, higher requirements concerning functional safety and quality do not only have an impact on the design of a component, but also strongly influence its manufacturing processes. To face these new challenges within manufacturing, automation is mandatory. The key-enabler as to automate as quickly and cost competitive as possible is to have a suitable product design. However, in many commodities, such as in the automotive high-voltage wire harness industry, the development and determination of the product design of sub-components and the subsequent assembly as well as the incurrence of related costs are separated in different companies throughout the supply chain. In terms of the high-voltage wire harness, the development and the assembly of high-voltage connectors, the most valuable sub-components, are usually separated. Consequently, a method is required to determine the strong influence of the product design on assembly and automation opportunities to consider this during the selection of sub-components.This paper conducts a systematic literature review to identify research publications that quantify the fitness for automated assembly based on the product design, cluster them and analyze their applicability. Based on the insights gained through the aforementioned procedure, we derive future research needs customized on the industry's problems to approach a higher level of automation within the manufacturing of automotive high-voltage wire harnesses by suitable sub-component selection.