Modularity as Key Enabler for Scalability of Final Assembly Units in the Automotive Sector

摘要

This paper presents a novel approach to design assembly units steplessly scalable according to their degree of automation, where the core idea involves substituting and reconfiguration of different manual assembly steps with automated solutions. For this reason assembly units are modularized in relation to their specific functional assembly steps. For each assembly function a manual and an automated solution or so called “functional module” is generated. Recombining these different solutions allows an almost infinitely variable scalability and a variety of diverging overall solutions can be generated for these production units. The procedure consists of designing a fully manually operated assembly unit which can be upgraded to a semi-automated or automated assembly unit by adding gradually functional modules. This has mainly two benefits: Firstly, in context of changeable production units this procedure helps to easily adapt the assembly unit to unforeseen changes of the production environment. Secondly, in the case of implementing the assembly unit at different places in a global production network, redesigning and over-engineering can be avoided by simply reconfiguring prepared functional modules. The presented approach is demonstrated for a use-case within the automotive sector. The conceptual work for a scalable cockpit assembly is shown and advantages according minimized engineering efforts are pointed out.