An Approach to Proactive Assembly Systems: -Towards competitive assembly systems

Manufacturing competitiveness is highly dependant on companies' ability to rapidly reconfigure their manufacturing and assembly systems. Efforts to approach emerging and self-reconfigurable systems could be successfully complemented by efficient integration of highly flexible human operators into the system. The concept of system proactivity is introduced which is based on the interrelated levels of automation, information, and competence in the assembly system. An ongoing project to develop proactive assembly systems, ProAct, is described.