FDAMP

Aims of the project

The goal of the project is to adapt production systems quickly and efficiently to changing requirements. This is to be achieved through flexible and easily reconfigurable automated production systems. A promising approach to increasing flexibility is to no longer use production resources, such as manufacturing cells, exclusively for a single product or a fixed production process. Instead, production resources should be able to be flexibly assigned to different products, processes, or technologies. The central idea behind this approach is a flexible and reconfigurable automated material transport system that is seamless—or intermodal—across various transport systems and links the various production resources together. This also makes it possible to integrate existing machines and equipment.

Rationale for the Project

For Bosch, rigidly interlinked production lines are no longer economically viable in all product areas due to rapidly changing customer requirements. Fluctuating production volumes caused by volatile markets, shorter product life cycles, and a faster pace of innovation on the product side require quicker adjustments to production lines without compromising manufacturing quality. However, existing manufacturing cells often need to be reused for other products and product variants—with no or only minimal adjustments—for individual production steps. In many cases, developing new systems involves excessive development costs and is too expensive. Therefore, for automated manufacturing, these cells often need to be (simply) reconfigured. To accomplish this quickly, cost-effectively, and flexibly, a novel transport system and a higher-level control system are required. The “proof of concept” for such a transport system, including all associated orchestration components, is the focus and objective of the project.

Project structure

The following members are contributing their expertise to the project:

NAiSE
Fleet manager for controlling vehicles.

Bosch Rexroth
TS.1-48V strap for quick and easy connection of permanently linked system components.

Bosch Research
A flexible and reconfigurable material transport system for linking stations and processes, as well as software components for material flow orchestration.