Product development to enable intuitive manual assembly

Many companies are experiencing an increasing demand for small series or even unique products. This is causing a large increase in complexity within the production apparatus. Manual assembly remains important here because of its flexibility. However, assembly tasks are becoming increasingly complex and many companies are trying to provide operators with additional support.

Industry 4.0 (cyber-physical systems with a.o., communication and monitoring) is a way to deal with this but the product itself should not be forgotten. After all, operators often use instructions insufficiently because they rely on their own insight and experience, and start interpreting the product to be assembled in the assembly context themselves. This can lead to errors in a context of small series and larger product families (lower efficiency, increase in costs to correct this). Instructions can also undermine the sense of competence and autonomy (two factors strongly linked to work motivation). This can lead to demotivation in these operators, burnout and absenteeism.

Therefore, solutions are needed that take into account the operator in assembly. In order to address these problems and maximize the response to the needs of the operator, a methodology has been developed that starts from product development and takes into account the needs of the operator during manual assembly: Design for Assembly Meaning (DFAM). This is especially important because the operator mainly intuitively determines the assembly or disassembly steps based on the interaction with the product to be assembled or disassembled. The methodology was developed during a PhD at UGent (Parmentier et al., 2019; 2020; 2021) and aims to design products that can be assembled much more intuitively with fewer assembly errors, less need for instructions and responding to the need for competence and autonomy. This has many advantages for the assembly process, the efficiency of the operator and his work motivation. The methodology not only responds to the needs within a normal assembly context but also builds the bridge to an industry 4.0 assembly context where operators can be supported through Augmented Reality (AR) and where monitoring of the assembly process is possible. Moreover, developments in digital production techniques such as additive manufacturing (AM) have made it possible in certain contexts to make adjustments to both components but also certainly to jigs and fixtures in relation to these components. Moreover, the methodology can also be applied to the manual disassembly process which in combination with the manual assembly process can facilitate the maintenance, repair and upgrade of the product, this in relation to the full product life cycle.

Within the Tetra project we want to implement this methodology in various business contexts and on various products. We want to get to know the company-specific factors in order to optimize the methodology in function of these factors as well as to quantify the impact of the methodology in various company contexts. We also want to develop demonstrator case(s) and training tool(s) in the project that will enable designers in companies to implement the methodology in a simple and tailored way.

In this Tetra project, outputs were generated in several areas. For example, the DFAM methodology was optimized through many case studies with companies. In total there were 17 case studies with companies (including some expert cases with implementations in the company.) During these cases the methodology was applied to the assembly processes of the companies which led to optimizations of these processes, but also to new insights and optimizations of the methodology. The methodology was made tangible in 6 different tools. In addition, 2 workshops were designed for companies to get started with the methodology. A first workshop on the theory and the basic model and a second workshop in which the companies dive into the assembly of the product, learn to identify problems and learn how they can possibly tackle them from different solution lenses (product, tools, jigs&fixtures, the environment). In addition to these 2 workshops of a more general nature, a full implementation track was also developed for companies. In this track, companies (R&D and production) learn the methodology with examples (use of the demonstrators) and also learn to apply it step by step to their own context. These workshops and implementation paths will also continue to be offered from the design.nexus research group at UGent. Also 6 demonstrators were developed, these demonstrators show in different ways the relevance of the methodology. They are used as neutral examples (not linked to the participating companies) and can therefore be used within workshops and training. Finally, a manual was also developed around how designing for intuitive assembly can be applied in higher education. This manual is based on the cases that were carried out in the design courses at Ghent University, University of Antwerp and Howest. The methodology was also integrated within the Education program of the Bachelor of Science in Industrial Design Engineering Technology at Ghent University and the workshops are also planned to continue at the University of Antwerp. Results were thus achieved in terms of tools, workshops, implementation process, demonstrators, integration in training and optimizations of assembly processes at the companies.