Assembly sequence plan generation of heavy machines based on the stability criterion

The Assembly or Disassembly Sequence Planning (ASP/DSP) remains an actual optimization problem in the manufacturing industry. It has represented a great deal of interest over the past three decades. Furthermore, given the complexity of today's mechanisms, an optimal ASP/DSP can reduce the design costs and minimize the maintenance time of industrial equipment. Among the least used criteria in ASP/DSP generation, the stability criterion seems to be quite interesting especially for heavy mechanisms. This paper proposes an approach to generate feasible ASP based on the components' stability during the assembly operations. The generation of feasible ASP was guaranteed using the geometrical and topological assembly constraints extracted from the CAD assembly. An example of a heavy machine is adopted to highlight the advantages of the proposed approach.