Introducing process building blocks for designing human robot interaction work systems and calculating accurate cycle times

In comparison to classic automated solutions, the direct cooperation of human workers and industrial robots offers new potential regarding flexibility, cost and ergonomics. However advantages are mostly not obvious and only few applications using human-robot interaction have found their way to the shop floor. Reasons for that are the lack of knowledge about this new technology, its capabilities and the availability of planning tools supporting the design of hybrid work systems. This paper presents an approach to describe robotic motions based on process building blocks as they are used in productivity management methodologies like Methods-Time Measurement for manual assembly. In combination with existing process building blocks systems it is possible to describe and design hybrid assembly stations taking mutual motions of human beings and robots into account and to extract accurate cycle time information.