Framework for describing functions of digital technologies in manual assembly systems

Abstract

The integration of digital technologies to promote digitization is essential for the competitiveness of manufacturing enterprises. As part of the production process, the manual assembly is subject of this digitizing change process. According to recent studies the integration of digital technologies is primarily limited to scenarios in larger enterprises or prototype applications. For companies with a manual assembly segment at a lower level of digitization these scenarios, adequately aggregated, potentially contain important insights related to the choice of appropriate digital technologies. An investigation of these scenarios, for example in the form of a qualitative study, therefore seems appropriate. In advance of such an investigation, however, the scope of the investigation, the manual assembly area, must be modeled in order to be able to depict specific situations in the scenarios under investigation. Secondly, the spectrum of digital technologies currently used in manual assembly must be identified and described. The latter is the topic of this paper. The authors of this paper aims to create a framework for describing and classifying digital technologies in manual assembly on the basis of their functions.