Assembly system design and operations for product variety

Assembly is the capstone process for product realization where component parts and subassemblies are integrated together to form the final products. As product variety increases due to the shift from mass production to mass customization, assembly systems must be designed and operated to handle such high variety. In this paper we first review the state of the art research in the areas of assembly system design, planning and operations in the presence of product variety. Methods for assembly representation, sequence generation and assembly line balancing are reviewed and summarized. Operational complexity and the role of human operators in assembly systems are then discussed in the context of product variety. Challenges in disassembly and remanufacturing in the presence of high variety are presented. We then conjecture a future manufacturing paradigm of personalized products and production and discuss the assembly challenge for such a paradigm. Opportunities for assembly system research are summarized at the end of the paper. (C) 2011 CIRP.