TABLE OF CONTENTS If the work must be done in 60 seconds and your robot needs 59 seconds, you get the job. If your robot takes 61 seconds, you don t get the job. It s that simple.
Joseph P. Engelberger, Unimation, Inc.
This chapter deals with designing a single assembly workstation. [1] The problem has three major aspects: strategic, technical, and economic. The strategic issues center on choice of method of accomplishing the assembly manual, robotic, and so on plus part presentation, flexibility, inspection, and throughput. The technical problems involve detailed technology choice and assurance of proper performance, mainly achieved via an error analysis. Economic analysis is concerned with choosing a good combination of alternative methods of achieving assembly and controlling error.
The information developed during workstation design is used in, and is influenced by, the effort to design an entire assembly system. Choices of assembly sequence or assembly resource will influence what choices are available, economical, or reasonable for the individual stations, and vice versa. The process is typically iterative.
Our objective in designing an assembly workstation is to accomplish one or more assembly operations, in the presence of errors, so as to meet a specification, and to verify the station s performance. The number and identity of the operations to be performed at a station are often tentatively decided during overall system design and may be revised often as station designs are attempted. Typical operations are part mating, application of adhesives, use of tools, application of heat, and measuring. The errors...
