How to minimize cycle times of robot manufacturing systems
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How to minimize cycle times of robot manufacturing systems Tobias Hofmann1 · David Wenzel2,3 Received: 31 October 2019 / Revised: 17 April 2020 / Accepted: 28 June 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The employment of industrial robot systems especially in the automotive industry noticeably changed the view of production plants and led to a tremendous increase in productivity. Nonetheless, rising technological complexity, the parallelization of production processes, as well as the crucial need for respecting specific safety issues pose new challenges for man and machine. Our goal is to develop algorithms, guidelines, and tools that make the commissioning of industrial robot systems more reliable by verifying the programs of robots and logical controllers. This in particular includes optimizing the schedule of the robot systems in order to ensure desired period times as well as conflict-free timetables already in the planning stage. The applicability of the Periodic Event Scheduling Problem proposed by Serafini and Ukovich (SIAM J Discrete Math 2(4):550–581, 1989) is investigated to tackle this cycle time minimization task, and we establish a variant of the classical formulation in order to cover the special characteristics of our scenario. We want to demonstrate how this key element forms a part of a range of developed software tools that support engineers and programmers throughout the commissioning of real-world robot production systems. Keywords Periodic event scheduling · Mixed-integer programming · Robot systems
* Tobias Hofmann [email protected]‑chemnitz.de David Wenzel david.wenzel.mathematik@t‑online.de 1
Faculty of Mathematics, Chemnitz University of Technology, Chemnitz, Germany
2
Leadec Automation and Engineering GmbH, Stuttgart, Germany
3
Institute for Solar‑Terrestrial Physics, German Aerospace Center – DLR, Neustrelitz, Germany
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T. Hofmann, D. Wenzel
1 Motivation In industrial production, using robots is a versatile mean to ensure manufacturing processes that are reliable and flexible. The technology allows for operating, e.g., with heavy loads, in harmful environments, and at non-ergonomic situations. At the same time, the work is done with high precision and under a reproducible quality. Because of these advantages, robots are widely used in mass production, in particular when several steps are required for obtaining the final product. Ongoing developments also spread the benefits to small series, even down to individual requests. 1.1 A glimpse into application The typical robot is nothing more than a kind of positioning machine, to which several tools can be attached performing the actual task like handling (pick and place, assembly) or connecting (gluing, welding). Most common are portal like constructions for getting to every point in (well, a technically limited) space and six-joint kinematics if, in addition to the position, the spatial orientation of the so-called end effector is relevant. Usually, the robot’s movement is described by the trace
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