Intelligent Production Monitoring and Control based on Three Main Modules for Automated Manufacturing Cells in the Automotive Industry

Abstract

The automotive industry is distinguished by regionalization and customization of products. As consequence, the diversity of products will increase while the lot sizes will decrease. Thus, more product types will be handled along the process chain and common production paradigms will fail. Although Rapid Manufacturing (RM) methodology will be used for producing small individual lot sizes, new solution for joining and assembling these components are needed. On the other hand, the non‐availability of existing operational knowledge and the absence of dynamic and explicit knowledge retrieval minimize the achievement of on‐demand capabilities. Thus, in this paper, an approach for an Intelligent Production System will be introduced. The concept is based on three interlinked main modules: a Technology Data Catalogue (TDC) based on an ontology system, an Automated Scheduling Processor (ASP) based on graph theory and a central Programmable Automation Controller (PAC) for real‐time sensor/actor communication. The concept is being implemented in a laboratory set‐up with several assembly and joining processes and will be experimentally validated in some research and development projects.