A conceptual digital assistance system supporting manual changeovers in high-variety production

Abstract

The advent of production strategies such as Mass Customization and Changeable Manufacturing requires that production systems be increasingly flexible towards diverse customer needs. Although humans remain the most flexible entity in modern production systems, the increasing complexity of these systems presents a challenge for the operators with regards to remaining efficient. Research related to Industry 4.0 has promoted the application of digital assistance systems, as a method of augmenting human operators to handle the complexity of these production systems better. However, no digital assistance system that supports human operators in performing manual changeover operations in complex production systems has been identified. This paper, therefore, presents a conceptual digital assistance system, which utilizes information about two consecutive production configurations, and processes this data through an algorithm, to determine which specific changeover operations are required to perform a changeover most efficiently. Potentials of implementing the proposed digital assistance system are briefly introduced, and topics for further research are outlined.