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2007
Journal Article
Titel
Sustainable automated production systems
Abstract
The growing number of product variants, smaller lot sizes, accelerated time to market and shorter life cycles of products have lead to increasing demands on production equipment and concepts. They must realise high flexibility related to variants, low cost adaptability of products, and quick amortisation within a sustainable concept. In order to master these challenges, innovative approaches and technologies are required. The performance of existing automation techniques is often insufficient. As a solution to this problem, hybrid, i.e. human integrated, approaches are proposed. Herewith, human flexibility, intelligence and skills could be combined with the advantages of sophisticated technical systems. A further aspect concerns the re-configurability of production systems and the reusability of equipment. This is related to a modular structure of production systems including standard interfaces for hardware and software. Additionally methods and tools are needed for reconfiguration planning, re-programming as well as life cycle and equipment management.