Capability-based assembly design: An approach for planning an agile assembly system in automotive industry

摘要

The automotive industry today is challenged by increasing product variance and the growing importance of alternative drive systems, leading manufactures to intensify their focus on agile assembly concepts with decoupled workstations. In comparison to line assembly, they enable quick reaction to changing production programs and address the issue of growing cycle time differences through flexible production scheduling. Since existing planning methodologies in this area primarily target the optimization of line balancing efficiency, this paper presents a capability-based approach towards an agile automotive assembly system, allowing the flexible assignment of operations to assembly stations regardless of underlying cycle time restrictions.