Template-based variant process planning for manned assembly lines

Abstract

Most major appliances are produced in manned assembly lines consisting of multiple workstations controlled by human labour. Since, human workers are very flexible in adapting to components’ major and minor changes, assembly process planning for manned assembly lines depends on products’ component structure than on the features of each component unlike automated systems. This paper proposes a framework for a variant process planning system for manned assembly lines comprising two phases: (1) the preparatory phase for building a database of standard process plans, and (2) the development phase for creating a new process plan through the modification of existing standard process plans. In the preparatory phase, this research develops a ‘work process analysis template’ that describes the task of human labour as a sequence of standard work processes. As the development phase requires an efficient method for evaluating the performance of assembly process plans, this research proposes an ‘assembly process analysis template’. The proposed framework is based on these two key templates, which provide process engineers with an efficient mechanism for performing assembly process planning for manned assembly lines. This framework has been implemented and the system successfully deployed at a Korean electronics company.