Human and robot allocation method for hybrid assembly systems

Manufacturing companies today need to increase both changeability and efficiency of production systems in order to strengthen their competitiveness. Hybrid assembly systems have evolved as solutions to counter this issue. In this system, humans and robots cooperate to perform assembly tasks; the system has the advantage of maximizing robot efficiency and human flexibility. This paper proposes a method for planning human and robot allocation in hybrid assembly systems. The method enables us to select the initial human and robot allocation, that minimizes the expected total production cost including robot investment and labor cost taking into consideration possible scenarios of future changes in product models and production volumes. (C) 2011 CIRP.