Enhancing Future Assembly Information Systems - Putting Theory into Practice

The manufacturing industry is in a changing state where technology advancements change the mindset of how manufacturing systems will function in the future. Industry 4.0 provides manufacturing companies with new methods for improved decision making processes and dynamic process control. Despite this ambition, the manufacturing industry is far away from implementing this approach in practice. Assembly information systems will play an even more vital role enabling information transfer from product design to shop floor assembly in the future. To prepare the industry for these changes that are foreseen and for those that are yet to be discovered, a learning factory environment is vital. Such an environment is intended to support the industry during the development of assembly information systems. This paper presents an industrial demonstrator which incorporates well-known methods for improving assembly work stations with the perspective on assembly information systems. These methods are still not widely used in manual assembly intense manufacturing companies. This demonstrator illustrates how established theories can be practically used when designing future assembly information systems. The demonstrator will be used to validate functionalities and requirements for future assembly information systems. (C) 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.