Assembly sequence planning (ASP) becomes one of the major challenges in product design and manufacturing. A good assembly sequence leads to reduced costs and duration in the manufacturing process. However, assembly sequence planning is known to be a classical NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem; assembly sequence planning with many product components becomes more difficult to solve. In t...

Part assembly path planning consists in computing automatically a collision-free path for the part between a disassembled position and an assembled one. The part is first considered as a freeflying object. We have devised a probabilistic diffusion algorithm specially dedicated to that case. Then, we propose two approaches to add a virtual mannequin in the assembly process. The first one consist...

The semiconductor manufacturing process usually consists of four main production stages: wafer fabrication, probe, assembly, and final test. This paper considers the lot-sizing and scheduling problem in the assembly stages. A hierarchical solution approach is outlined with focus on the first of three suggested phases, namely the bottleneck lot-sizing and scheduling phase. The approach integrate...

'Ibis paper prescnts a compact representation of all possible assembly plans of a given product using AND/OR graphs. Such a representation forms the basis for efficient planning algorithms which cnablc an increase in asscmbly system Ilexibility by allowing an intelligent robot to pick a course of action according to instantaneous conditions. Two applications are discussed: the selection of the ...

A very wide range of micro-components, such as sensors, mechanical components and actuators can today be produced using micro-techniques. At the current stage, microsystem technology demands for advanced assembly facilities which can assemble complex microsystems consisting of many single components (i.e. hybrid microsystems). To perform a fully automated microassembly, problems specific to the...