• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.111-117
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• 1998

In order to increase productivity of an assembly system composed of multiple robots along a conveyer line, an efficient sequence planning is necessary because the assembly time is dependent upon the assembly sequence. In this paper, a two-robot assembly system is considered in which two robots operate simultaneously and transfer parts from the part feeders to the workpiece on the conveyer one by one. In this case, the distance from the feeder to the workpiece varies with time because the workpiece moves at a constant speed on the conveyer. Hence, the sequence programming is not a trivial problem. Also, the two robots may interfere with each other kinematically and dynamically due to the simultaneous operation, so the sequence should be programmed to avoid the interferences. In this paper, the task sequence optimization problem is formulated and is solved by employing the simulated annealing which has been shown to be effective for solving large combinatorial optimizations.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.160-170
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• 2008

This paper proposes a mathematical model for converting conveyor assembly line to cellular manufacturing in complex production environments. Complex production environments refer to the situations with multi-products, variant demand, different batch sizes and the worker abilities varying with work stations and products respectively. The model proposed in this paper aims to determine (1) how many cells should be formatted; (2) how many workers should be assigned in each cell; (3) and how many workers should be rested in shortened conveyor line when a conveyor assembly line should be converted, in order to optimize system performances which are defined as the total throughput time and total labor power. We refer the model to a new production system. Such model can be used as an evaluation tool in the cases of (i) when a company wants to change its production system (usually a belt conveyor line) to a new one (including cell manufacturing); (ii) when a company wants to evaluate the performance of its converted system. Simulation experiments based on the data collected from the previous documents are used to estimate the marginal impact that each factor change has had on the estimated performance improvement resulting from the conversion.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.124-133
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• 2017

In the current lighting market, LEDs that have a high luminous efficiency, a long life and consume less power have emerged as next generation lighting. Owing to various designs and sizes of LEDs, the production process of existing LEDs involves many tasks that require manual labor; hence, the assembly of LEDs necessitates manpower. Because of the use of manpower, the production costs of LEDs increases and production efficiency decreases. Recently, the assembly parts of LEDs have been standardized for minimizing manual labor, and an LED is developed as an LED panel. The automatic assembly system produces LED convergent lighting by assembling two LED panels and one diffusion cover. To increase the production efficiency of the LED convergent lighting module, it is important that the development of a feeder can continuously supply the LED panels is required, and whose design has sufficient stability. The automatic assembly system of the LED convergent lighting module consists of two feeders, which convey LED panels and diffusion covers to a main conveyor, which assembles the lifted panels and covers. In this study, structural analysis and fatigue life for forced loads on the conveyer line of the feeder in the process of lifting LED panels and diffusion covers of each feeder, is analyzed. In addition, the drive of the belt constituting the conveyor line of each feeder is simulated, and the dynamic characteristics of the belt is analyzed using the virtual engineering method.