Development of an Integrated Domain Representation for Configuration, Action Planning, and Layout Planning of Assembly Systems

During the past fifteen years, robot work cells have become a standard component of many industrial production systems. Up to now, the design of a robot work cell or a automated work station for a specific manufacturing process is a demanding task, although tools have been already developed for different design steps. The problem is that each tool is suitable only for one design step such as assembly planning, cell configuration, layout planning, and robot programming. The mutual effect among these design steps cannot be considered, although it is necessary for a high quality design. Thus, the common way is the manual design by human designers who have to work cooperatively for this task. This paper presents a new theoretical approach for an integrated design process consisting of process planning, component selection and work station planning.