Assembly Systems
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Assembly Systems Peter Butalaa* and Khumbulani Mpofub a Department of Control and Manufacturing Systems, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia b Department of Industrial Engineering, Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria West, South Africa
Synonyms Assembly cell; Assembly line
Definition An assembly system is one of the subsystems in a manufacturing system – factory – where the individual components of a product are joined together and thus integrated into a semifinished or into the final product. The Oxford dictionary defines assembly as the action of fitting together the component parts of a machine or other object and system as a set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network, a complex whole (Oxford dictionary). Most noticeable examples of assembly systems are assembly lines and assembly cells. The Cambridge online dictionary further defines an assembly line as a line of machines and workers in a factory where a product moves along while it is being built or produced. Each machine or worker performs a particular job, which must be finished before the product moves to the next position in the line (Cambridge dictionary).
Extended Definition An assembly system is a working arrangement where individual components are combined and joined to form a unit that may be further integrated with other components to create a final product. Figure 1 illustrates the various elements of an assembly system. The type of product to be produced, the size of the product, and the number of components that make up the product will determine the manner of assembly that the product will take. There are mainly three types of assembly systems, which are manual assembly systems, automated assembly systems, and the hybrid assembly systems (Groover 2008).
Theory and Application Introduction The definitions above have categorized the assembly system with respect to the nature of the product integration and also with respect to the level of human involvement. In this essay, the historical synopsis of assembly systems, the technology aspects, human aspects, design approach, and future assembly system perspectives are presented.
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CIRP Encyclopedia of Production Engineering DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-35950-7_16789-1 # CIRP 2015
Fig. 1 Basic assembly system representation
History The history of assembly systems is seen to have gathered momentum from the development of machine tools in the nineteenth century and then accelerated the practice of assembly till in the early twentieth century assembly lines for the Model T by Ford evolved. The twentieth century has seen to the broad development of assembly systems, and their application and development continue to grow in immense magnitude through the years to come. A system’s approach to assembly processes has its roots in the seventies and followed the manufacturing systems concepts. The term assembly systems denoted at that time programmable and flexible assembly systems. An overview of the state-of-the-art an
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