Toward a Real-Time Reconfiguration of Self-Adaptive Smart Assembly Systems

In the current industrial context, signed by the advent of Industry 4.0, traditional manufacturing systems are evolving towards the new class of Next Generation Manufacturing Systems (NGMSs), characterized by the main attributes of changeability, reconfigurability and self-adaptability. Such advanced systems are able to cope with the new industrial and market challenges as the dynamic market demand, short products life cycles and the need for flexibility. This paper presents the design and control of an innovative prototype of Self-adaptive Smart Assembly System (SASAS) able to real-time reconfigure its structure according to both product and operator features. An easy-to-use graphic user interface (GUI), developed in Matlab environment, supports the human operators in the real-time system reconfiguration and self-adaptability by storing information about the work cycles of the products manufactured by the case company and associating each operation of the product work cycle to a specific movement of the system. Finally, the proposed GUI allows the operators to quickly add new products work cycles in response to the customers’ request for new product variants, matching the Industry 4.0 principles.