EXPERIENCE REUSE BETWEEN MOBILE PRODUCTION MODULES - AN ENABLER FOR THE FACTORY-IN-A-BOX CONCEPT

Abstract

Today's increased demand for flexible and fast reconfiguration of production systems is seen as one of the key factors for survival by many branches, especially small and medium sized enterprises. To enable adaptable and flexible production, we propose an integrated experience reuse system assisting in setup, operation, maintenance and repair. We present three subsystems that facilitate experience reuse between different engineers and operators working with standardised production modules. It is composed of three separate software components enabling: a) easy programming and control of robot cells, b) monitoring and condition based maintenance, c) distributed experience reuse. The results presented in this paper have been developed within the Factory-in-a-Box project, the ExAct project and the Eken project.