Flexibilization 4.0 for production manufacturing optimization

Abstract

The continuous variations of requirements and the versatility of customers have a real impact on the company performance. Digital transformation corresponds to one lever for making the company more competitive. New technologies and tools are required as recommended in Industry 4.0 concepts for making this transformation a success. This paper focuses on production manufacturing problems such as human-machine collaboration, to achieve a high level of performance while maintaining a wide range of operational complexity, guaranteeing the flexibility of the workstations and thus the company’s ability to respond to varied demands. A sustainable digital transformation methodology has been elaborated for solving problems related to human-robot collaboration during the production process, to reduce lead time and decreasing series changing time. After a literature review on artificial intelligence (AI), collaborative robotics and production performance optimization methods, this article describes the developed sustainable digital transformation methodology and focuses on operational problems that could be solved in this frame. Then, the results obtained on an electronic card Industry 4.0 demonstration platform will be presented.