Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPTResearch Project "freeMoVe"
(Off.: Wandlungsfähige Montage in frei vernetzten Montagesystemen)
Growing variance and decreasing quantities as a challenge for the assembly organization
As the place where variants are created, assembly is particularly affected by changing sales expectations, shorter product life cycles and increasing product variance. However, process sequences that are rigid in terms of location and time can lead to difficulties here if the concatenation used and the control paradigms based on it do not permit simple adjustments. Within »freeMoVe« Fraunhofer IPT and its project partners therefore focused on new forms of assembly organization.
Free networking as a new organizational form for versatile mounting systems
The aim of the research project was to develop a new form of organization for the highly variable assembly of small quantities up to batch size 1 in order to design versatile and freely networked assembly systems. To this end, a control system for freely networked assembly systems was developed at field and control level. An intelligent information system was also developed to provide employees with situation-specific and needs-based information.
A system architecture was developed that enables the organizational form to a versatile, highly variable assembly of small quantities up to lot size 1. In addition, a control system and an intelligent information system were developed and suitable station technologies and gripping, clamping and feeding systems for automated assembly stations were selected. Mobile transport and handling platforms ensure the transfer between the individual assembly stations, a mobile robot platform allows temporary automated handling processes.
Project Consortium
- Henkel+Roth GmbH
- IFSYS Integrated Feeding Systems GmbH
- Infineon Technologies AG
- ISTEC Industrielle Software-Technik GmbH
- Philips Innovation Services
- Phoenix Contact GmbH & Co. KG
- ZF Friedrichshafen AG
- Zimmer GmbH
- Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering of RWTH Aachen University (WZL)
- Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT
Project Management Organization
Projektträger Karlsruhe PTKA