Pilot work station for flexible wiring harness assembly

The essential objectives in the factory of the future are reduction of throughput time, improved adherence to production and delivery schedules and product quality. This requires increased flexibility in product planning, design and manufacture. At the Fraunhofer IPA Stuttgart, a pilot work station has been developed for the flexible manufacturing of wire harness assemblies. This concept permits the computer-aided design of a wire harness assembly, the automated generation of a run-off program for an industrial robot, the set-up of harness-specific peripheral components by the industrial robot itself as well as the manufacture of any quantitiy of wire harness assemblies desired, even a batch size of "1".