Assembly Line Balancing with Collaborative Robots under consideration of Ergonomics: a cost-oriented approach

The role of automation in modern manufacture experienced increasing relevance throughout past decades. However, manufacturers cannot efficiently automate many tasks to date and consequently utilize human workers, which are subject to limited physical capacity. In recent years, collaborative robots can support manual task execution at low costs. This novel technology may thus represent a cost-efficient opportunity of (partial) automation of assembly tasks. We consider an assembly line balancing problem to determine cost-efficient system configurations, in which collaborative robots and human workers may be assigned to the stations of the line. We develop a mathematical model and illustrate its functionality using a real-world oriented case study. Subsequently, we identify the determining factors of the use of collaborative robots. The results demonstrate that collaborative robots are an economic option for automation in manual manufacture. (C) 2019, IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) Hosting by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.