Co-platforming of products and assembly systems

In an era characterized by diversity in customer requirements, manufacturing firms strive to cope by introducing variety of products in an attempt to satisfy customers' needs. Product changes and modifications propagate from the design to the manufacturing phase affecting product/machine assignment requiring dynamic scheduling and resources planning and often leading to costly physical changes in the manufacturing system. An integrated methodology for synthesizing assembly systems for customized products through mapping between products platform and the assembly system platform, which is coined “Co-platforming”, was introduced. This methodology is applied in three phases: functional synthesis of generic assembly machine candidates, functional synthesis of optimum assembly machine types and their number and finally, physical synthesis of assembly system configuration. A matrix-based formulation and mixed integer linear programming optimization models are utilized. The methodology is applied to a case study for an automotive cylinder head assembly line. The significance of this new methodology lies in establishing strong mapping between products and systems platforms and using it to synthesize assembly systems capable of co-adaptation, which prolongs the system life to be used not only for many product variants but also for many product generations with minimal additional investments. The proposed methodology aids in synthesizing highly customized assembly systems capable of producing different product variants in different production periods.