Ship Block Assembly Modeling Based on the Graph Theory

Abstract

In many industries, the balance of the production-cycle-t ne of an assembly can be controlled according to the assembly sequence. This is undesirable as an unbalanced production-cycle-time results in low productivity. To generate an assembly sequence, a large amount of data such as the"geometry", the"joint relation " and the"assembly method" must be prepared. This study is concerned with an example of automatic assembly modeling that is achieved using a prototype system based on graph theory and its algorithms. Four sub-levels of a ship block assembly model are proposed. These are the"geometry model", the"relational model", the"sequential model" and the"hierarchical model". The purpose of the hierarchical model in this study is to define an assembly tree and to calculate the Bill of Materials (BOM).