Toward Better Integration of Vehicle Assembly Production Systems

Abstract

In today’s manufacturing world, system integration often necessitates composing systems of technology that are not designed to interoperate with each other. This inherent incompatibility results in redundant, non–value added work that is required for information to be properly transferred and processed in order for the total system to function properly. As a result, current approaches to systems integration tend to be complicated, costly, time–consuming, and error–prone. In the automotive industry, this integration predicament is found most dramatically in vehicle assembly systems, which are built from a collection of different, incompatible, and multi–vendor “silo” subsystems. This paper will investigate the problems associated with integration of vehicle assembly systems and propose a standard information and communication model to address the integration problems due to incompatible data models. Benefits to the standard information and communication model, including better integration, improvements to the efficiency of the existing vehicle assembly operations, and additional capabilities to increase productivity, is discussed.