Novel approach for the automated assessment of the »fitness for automation« of an assembly based on a neutral product model

Companies involved in product assembly from high-wage countries face several challenges due to a shortage of skilled workers, rising cost pressures, and an increasing number of variants. To remain competitive in the market, companies must select an appropriate level of automation for their assembly. Currently, automation decisions are typically made by individual experts, whose decision-making processes may not always follow a structured methodology and, therefore, cannot be reproduced. While there are methods for evaluating the automation potential of existing assembly workstations, there are currently no automated approaches for evaluating the automation potential of assembly processes even before a workstation is designed. As the manual and individual analysis of possible automation approaches for assembly tasks also ties up skilled workers, this approach is time-consuming and cost-intensive. This research paper presents an approach to automatically evaluate the »fitness for automation« of an assembly based on a neutral product model using neutral data formats. The »Fitness for Automation« (FfA) is a dimension of the automation potential besides the »savings potential«. The FfA reflects how easily individual assembly sequences and ultimately an assembly can be automated or, equally, how great the implementation risk of automation is, and where design changes could be performed.