Development of Projection Based Assistance System for Manual Assembly

The requirements for the configuration of assembly systems are changing. With innovation times and product life cycles constantly being shortened, as well as an increasing number of variants and small batches contributing to this phenomenon, industries are faced with the challenge to create efficient processes with high process capability. In particular, assembly errors happen because of activities with larger work content and fluctuating demands. In addition, under these conditions often quantity or rather productivity targets are missed. The reasons for this are the insufficient support of learning processes for new employees as well as the missing preparation of assembly information, which should be designed to be spotted quickly and implemented intuitively correct. In a study at the Laboratory of Industrial Engineering of the Ostwestfalen-Lippe University of Applied Sciences, a prototype of a projection based assistance system for manual assembly has been developed and tested. The system contains functionalities for ergonomic display of work instructions. These include, markers and precise positioning representations corresponding with these, a pick-to-light function and other features. By adapting the representation to the context-sensitive information, the complexity of large work contents can be made manageable.