IoT (Internet of Things) expands terminal of internet to any objects and constructs a network that covers everything in the world, things in this network are able to exchange information.
Use of IoT in assembly line will visualize it to facilitate decision making, record live data of assembly lines and process this data to decision making, layout, and scheduling optimization for given assembly line.
This will include tracking the parts and workers of the facility, introducing a digital real-time interface for workstations and visualization of performance statistics for dispatching personnel optimizing the assembly processes. Ultimately, it give new ways to industries to visualize the assembly process, its bottle necks and in the end provide useful statistics and analytics.
The aim of using IoT in assembly line is to provide real – time information driven navigation services for each assembly station to achieve real – time guidance and optimization. To collect real – time manufacturing information, RFID technologies are adopted here. From bottom to top two key sections are included in the proposed IoT – enable smart assembly station. Assembly area, WIP item area, and raw materials area are the three areas classified. To capture the manufacturing items attached with RFID tags, an antenna is installed for each area. Then tracking and tracing of real-time manufacturing information is done, for assembly stations it is the key to designed real-time information-driven navigation services.
There are three core navigation services of the IoT – enabled smart assembly station as given below:
- OGS : The purpose of it is to provide instruction and operation details during the assembly process to operators, which could reduce the frequency of quality problems which occur due to the improper operation and wrong installation of materials.
- RPDS : Dynamic connection between the upstream and downstream assembly stations is established using RPDS. On other relevant stations, the assembly stations can get collaborative information. The co-operative information will help the IoT – enabled smart assembly station to rapidly capture the production expectations and do take the right decision.
- RPQ : It is responsible to queue the order of the tasks of each assembly station based on the captured exceptions such as lack of new task , high priority , raw materials, changed delivery time, etc.
In the traditional manufacturing process, production plans are made and implemented and changes caused by exceptions caused by raw material unavailability for some products and emergency orders among other items distort the planned output. Therefore, frequently breaking up and making new plans of production results in low efficiency production assembly. To identify the cause of exception and handle these abnormal events efficiently, hierarchical-timed-coloured based real time production performance analysis and exception diagnosis model is enabled by IoT.
Both flexibility and quality of assembly process increases and waste reduces by using smart assembly station. The challenges that assembly stations are facing are the lack of consistent, accurate, and real-time information of manufacturing resources and the lack of an overall solution to track, trace, share the real-time manufacturing information.
Due to these issues, many difficulties occur in the assembly operations using the current assembly status, and net result is that it leads to assembly exceptions. Through an IoT platform, industries can reach higher competitiveness globally and become a leader within the digitalization field.