| Summary: | In recent years mass customization has become popular with a large number of
products. This increases volatility in product design, which amplifies the complexity
of production as well. One of the areas which are most directly affected by design
changes is assembly lines. Industry 4.0 enables manufacturers to tackle these
challenges with technical innovations such as the Digital Twin. Used as a virtual
model of a physical system it can support engineers to estimate the impact of
changing production environments and decision making.
This dissertation provides a framework that connects product design and an assembly
system in preparation for the implementation into Digital Twins. A literature review
on product architecture, Design for Manufacturing and Assembly, and production is
performed. Assessment models for each of these topics are analyzed and compared.
Due to the inaccuracy of existing models in low volume productions, an adjustable
manual assembly time estimation method with a broader range of factors is
developed. The proposed estimation method is then integrated into the framework to
gauge the impact of design changes on assembly lines. This framework consists of
assembly time estimation, line rebalancing, and reconfiguration as well as assembly
sequence adjustment. Finally, the proposed framework has proven to work when
applied to a case study in the production machine manufacturing industry.
To increase usability for engineers, the proposed framework has to be integrated into
a Digital Twin. This would also simplify the integration of design change propagation
in other areas such as supply chain and manufacturing. Through refinement during
the application in other industries, the range of the proposed framework could be
improved.
|
|---|