On the automatic generation of product assembly sequences

Automatic assembly planning is recognized as an important tool for achieving concurrent product and process development thus reducing manufacturing costs. It plays an important role in designing and planning the assembly systems. In order to recommend a good sequence of assembly operations, the process planner needs to generate all such feasible sequences. In this paper, the representation of the product assembly relationships and the assembly processes is described. Considering the assembly knowledge and the assembly constraints, a methodology is presented to generate all feasible assembly sequences by determining and decomposing the levelled feasible subassemblies. A prototype reasoning expert system is developed to generate all feasible assembly sequences automatically. The research ® ndings are exempli® ed with a simple assembly to illustrate the method.