Automated design of multi-station assembly lines

Abstract Automated assembly lines are a fundamental part of today’s manufacturing industry. Due to shortening product life cycles and an increasing number of product variants, assembly lines have to be designed with increasing frequency. Currently, all design decisions are based on the knowledge and expertise of engineers and the design process results in a high amount of manual effort. This paper therefore presents an approach to making the knowledge of these experts explicit and using it as the basis for the automated planning of multi-station assembly lines. The proposed planning method includes the scheduling of the assembly line and the selection of resources and their positioning into a feasible layout.