A Function Based Approach for Designing Intelligent Flexible Automated Manufacturing Environments

SInBot [8] is large research project (10+ partners), that started in November 2011 and that focuses on maximizing the efficient use of robotics support during medium sized production runs. In that project, the production of a dump truck with a fiber reinforced loading bay will be used as a case to test the developed theories and hardware (mainly sensor development is expected). In the early stages of the project it remains unclear what and how automation will be organized. This leads to the question; how to define the layout of the production plant, if the level of automation is still unknown. Before the start of the SInBot project, research was already started for the development of a method that allows for the directed development of layouts. In this paper this method will be described and three example layouts will be presented and evaluated.