Development of production cells with regard to physical and cognitive automation: A decade of evolution

This paper will discuss a company's view and evolution of physical and cognitive automation regarding four product families that have been put in production the past decade. The focus of this paper is on the mindset of the production engineers when changing the assembly cells of the products. Results, from observations and interviews, reveal that both the physical and cognitive automation have been considered when designing new assembly cells at the company. Automation has decreased during time covered by the studies. Further, an evolution in lean production and increased involvement of the operators have been in focus during the last two product cell designs, in order to reach recourse and volume flexibility. Moreover, in order to decrease the product complexity, the engineers always design one cell per product family.