Control and hardware for flexible assembly cells - structures of the future

According to current forecasts assembly requirements of the future will entail mastery of an increasing number of product variants and shorter innovation cycles. At the same time growing quality demands and intensifying competition will also have to be taken into account. How will these factors affect control and hardware components in assembly installations of the future? There is a distinct trend in assembly at present towards more flexible systems consisting of about twothirds standard constructions and one-third process-specific modules. This paper discusses the way in which this philosophy affects the control structure of assembly cells and systems and the developments on which flexible hardware will have to be based. The control of the presented multi-functional assembly cell is based on an universal control module. The hierarchically structured multiple arrangement of this control module in different control levels and an operating system capable of multiprocessing allows the sy nchronized control of parallel processes.