Whether cars, smartphones or washing machines – today, technical products are assembled in large quantities by assembly systems. They screw, join and glue components and assembly groups in automated work steps to create finished products. If a product is only manufactured in small quantities or in different variants, the assembly is done by hand. For manufacturing companies in Germany, however, manual assembly is not economical due to the high costs of personnel. The result is that more and more assembly stations are being relocated to low-wage countries.

How must assembly systems be designed so that German companies will remain competitive in international markets in the future? Jürgen Jasperneite, head of the Institute Industrial IT at Ostwestfalen-Lippe University of Applied Sciences and Arts, is looking into this question as part of the Montageystem 4.0 project. Together with his research team, he is developing intelligent assembly systems that are versatile, resource-efficient and user-friendly, and are therefore particularly suitable for manufacturing companies in Germany.

Components such as conveyor belts, assistance robots or control and assembly systems will be purchased for research into production plants as part of the project. These complement the already existing technical equipment of SmartFactoryOWL, a joint research and demonstration factory of Ostwestfalen-Lippe University of Applied Sciences and Arts and the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. Here, new technologies for the factory of the future can be investigated, developed and tested under realistic conditions.

The production plants in Lemgo are modularly designed: every step in the assembly process is contained in individual modules that can be switched out like Lego bricks. Depending on the amount of incoming orders, production plant capacity can therefore be expanded or reduced. In the future, manufacturers should be able to put together a production system from different modules tailored to their needs. Using so-called plug-and-produce techniques, the modules can be arranged in any order and put into operation immediately – and across all manufacturers. This makes production more flexible, so that mass and individual production are no longer mutually exclusive.

The Federal Ministry of Education and Research is supporting the research project with about 430,000 euros within the framework of the FH-Invest funding line as part of the Research at Universities of Applied Sciences programme.