Brick by Brick - Findings of an of-the-Shelf Automation System Application for Building Block Component Group Disassembly

Automation is one of the key drivers in today's global economy. It ensures the conduction of a manifold of standardized processes which helps tackle the decreasing amount of skilled workers in certain areas as well as reducing cost. Although automation is broadly used nowadays, the overall applicability of automated processes is often limited to use cases with predefined process steps of minor flexibility. However, new and upcoming sustainable industries that are focusing on product life-cycle prolonging (e.g. repair, refurbish, and remanufacture (3Rs)) options to enable Circular Economy-friendly treatment, require a high amount of adaptability in automated systems to tackle the high variability of product compositions in disassembly scenarios. The goal of the conducted case study is therefore to investigate the possibilities of a nowadays available of-the-shelf automation system regarding its functions and mechanisms towards enabling automated adaptability by using disassembly scenarios of component groups consisting of different building blocks as an example scenario and the concluding future research areas. The paper, therefore, investigates the different methods offered by the default system and applies them to various levels of disassembly scenarios. The conducted study helps to clarify the capabilities of the system's functionalities in the overall goal to enhance adaptability in disassembly processes.