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As a result of significant shifts from seller’s markets to buyer’s markets, driven by an increase in product customisation and greater product diversity, manual assembly work is evolving from conventional mass production to high-variety series production and, beyond that, to what is known as industrial customised assembly [1]. Furthermore, an increasingly heterogeneous labour market poses an ever-greater challenge to the planning and efficient operation of assembly systems. This particularly affects SMEs in the electronics and mechanical engineering industries, as well as related sectors.
In the transition towards industrial customised assembly, the situation-based adaptability of assembly systems plays a key role. This enables a rapid response to internal and external influences through situation-based adjustments, substitutions and transformations of the system, thereby optimising time and cost efficiency [2].
The adaptability of factory structures is highlighted as a prerequisite for a sustainable competitive structure, which is made possible by modularity, resource efficiency, cost-effectiveness and speed [3].
Due to increasing product diversity and decreasing batch sizes, changeover activities play a significant role in manual, high-variety assembly systems.
In the traditional sense, set-up is understood as the ‘planned reconfiguration’ of the assembly system following a change of order [3].
The adaptive assembly approach requires further research into the development and testing of systematic methods for SMEs. This includes planning methodologies incorporating assembly assistance or virtual/augmented reality, as well as the practical validation of these solutions. The applicability to systems with different types of staff must be considered on a case-by-case basis.
About the person
Falk Gruber studied industrial production, specialising in production engineering and management (Bachelor’s specialisation), at the Glauchau University of Cooperative Education (now DHSN) and Mechanical Engineering, specialising in Resource-efficient Manufacturing Technology, at Mittweida University of Applied Sciences. Since December 2024, he has been working as a research assistant in the Chair of Production Informatics at Mittweida University of Applied Sciences and is a PhD candidate under the supervision of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Leif Goldhahn.
