Beyond assembly features: systematic review of the core concepts and perspectives towards a unified approach to assembly information representation

Abstract

Product development requires sharing information of a diverse nature between several actors. Since the new products resulting from this process often require assembly as part of their manufacturing processes, it becomes necessary to promote a functional information representation for the assembly domain. Several authors have proposed different core concepts to represent the information related to assembly. However, the resulting body of knowledge is fragmented and lacks a unified concept and definition of the information this concept should contain to be broadly adopted by the academy and industry. This study aims to identify and characterize the core concepts used to enclose the assembly information (e.g., assembly features, ports, connectors, and others) by conducting a literature review in the domain of discrete manufacturing, considering the period between 1985 and 2022. It was found that the literature is rich in concepts but often diverging: a clear depiction of the assembly information required by the involved stakeholders during the whole product development process remains elusive. This work's contribution addresses this gap by identifying the perspectives from which the assembly information can be studied, and the information required to describe the assembly process fully. The resulting information requirements were used to assess the existing approaches addressing assembly information representation. These findings can be used as a base to establish a comprehensive assembly information representation in the future.