Consolidation of lifecycle information for collaborative assembly of products with many variants

Collaborative assembly systems, in which the skilled worker interacts with a robot, offer great potential for optimization in the assembly of a wide range of products. However, the long-term and economical operation of such systems requires, among other things, new methods of production planning. For this, the assembly planner needs tools in order to be able to easily derive the robot's work areas and the cycle times resulting from the process. This is especially true for workplaces where both humans and robots can be used. In particular, the division of work content for humans and robots at collaborative assembly workstations poses a planning challenge. In addition, it is currently not possible to return recorded operating data to the planning phase for the purpose of technical and economic evaluation or system optimization.

The aim of the KoKoMo joint project is to trace operating data of collaborative assembly systems and product data of the products to be manufactured back into planning systems, to integrate them and thus to simplify the introduction and operation of interactive assembly workstations by means of suitable information consolidation. The central starting point is the possibility of flexibly adapting these processes to new product variants by transferring process knowledge about similarities and optimally integrating human and robot capabilities. Three medium-sized companies with a wide range of products will be piloted to enable them to master collaborative assembly systems by selecting suitable technologies and to operate them economically in the long term using digital planning and evaluation tools. This will be accompanied by the development and testing of introduction aids and training concepts for the employees concerned.