Development of a New Type of Carousel-based Compacted Work System for Mixed-model Assembly in Mechanical Engineering

In mechanical engineering, individual functional units of a machine are often assembled by one operator at single workstations or at one-piece flow lines. Based on the order information, the required parts are taken from flow racks and assembled step by step to build a functional unit. The existing assembly concepts have two decisive disadvantages in operational practice. First, a large number of components to be provided leads to long walking distances at the work station or line. Second, as the complexity of the assembly task increases, the informational portion of the work increases, so that paper-based information provision can lead to unnecessary assembly errors and additional times. For these reasons, a compacted assembly system has been developed in which, firstly, material is supplied via driven carousels and, secondly, the necessary information is provided to the operator via a cognitive assistance system. The article shows that this concept can reduce walking distances while avoiding assembly errors and additional times.