Real-time information driven intelligent navigation method of assembly station in unpaced lines

•Propose an INoAS to facilitate real-time monitor and optimization for each station.•Design an OGS to provide the operators with real-time guidance.•Design a CPS to share the real-time collaborative information among the stations.•Design a RQS to dynamically optimize the order of each station’s job list.

This paper considers the assembly station as a breakthrough to improve the real-time information driven control and optimization of assembly process in unpaced asynchronous line. By adopting automatic identification technologies, the overall architecture of the real-time intelligent navigation of assembly station (INoAS) is put forward. Under this architecture, three core services, namely the real-time assembly operating guidance service (OGS), collaborative production service (CPS) among assembly stations and real-time queuing service (RQS) of the jobs at each station, are designed to provide optimal and dynamical navigation for assembly activities for each station. Then, the disturbances and exceptions could be timely captured by installing the INoAS at each station, and the operating guidance, collaborative production information sharing and real-time queuing could be easily achieved. The presented architecture and services of INoAS will facilitate the real-time information driven process monitor and control between the line and stations.