Integrated and modular product design for automatic assembly

Experience has shown that various bottlenecks still thwart the widespread application of robotic assembly systems. These bottlenecks include a high complexity of the product design. In the past years numerous DFA methods have been developed to optimize product design, and thus reduce the complexity of the assembly process and reduce assembly costs. Nevertheless, the said problems still occur in automatic assembly. That is why the main theme of this paper is the systematic ordering and structuring of the product variables which play a role in automatic assembly. The author discusses these variables by means of a developed assembly reference model, which offers a good insight into the product design process.