Reconfigurable fixtures for automotive engine machining and assembly applications

Abstract

The industrial needs to respond quickly to new product changeovers and fluctuating market demands have generated immense academic interests and research activities to develop a broad spectrum of reconfigurable manufacturing systems and technologies in the equipment (hardware), methodologies (software), and control modules (interfaces) arenas so as to produce the demanded volume of the desired product at the opportune time and at optimal costs [16, 17, 18]. The combined efforts of numerous research initiatives worldwide have made major strides in developing basic theories and paradigm-shift technology innovations as the building blocks of the science and engineering of reconfigurable manufacturing. Nevertheless, the development of agile or reconfigurable fixtures has not been one of the more popular mainstream focused research areas. © 2006 Springer.