Digital Assembly Assistance Systems: Methods, Technologies and Implementation Strategies

Flexible manufacturing processes, diversified products and small lot sizes are imposing new demands on assemblers by confronting them with constantly changing work parameters. Innovative HCI technologies and systems help assemblers perform their jobs with digital assembly assistance systems integrated in their workstations. This chapter surveys current technological building blocks, methods and implementation strategies for the design and development of such solutions. First, the authors describe specific implementation and development strategies with a sociotechnical design approach. The goal of such strategies is to develop effective solutions that employees accept and use on a sustained basis. One prerequisite for this is that selected technologies are designed to be conducive to learning and comply with human factors standards. To this end, criteria are developed, which have an impact on success and therefore ought to be ascertained and incorporated in design. Finally, specific assistive inspection and learning technologies are presented, which facilitate the implementation of assembly assistance systems compliant with human factors standards. Specific examples from industrial practice serve to explain the technologies.