FLEXIBLE FIXTURES - A TREATISE ON FIXTURE DESIGN AND EFFICIENCY
Licentiate thesis, 2017

Even though a variety of efforts have been made in the area of flexible fixtures, the manufacturing industry still relies on dedicated fixtures with minor modular features. The main underlying reason, as these attempts have shown, is that the application of flexible fixtures has failed to yield the expected results, with the implemented technologies often leading to increased manufacturing costs when compared to dedicated fixtures. As this has a negative impact on industry’s return on investment, a grey and largely uncharted area has arisen around the efficiency of flexible fixtures. The research that forms the basis of this thesis is intended to explore, describe and increase the efficiency of flexible fixtures in manufacturing industry. In order to fulfil this aim, two research questions have been asked. The first question focuses on exploring and description of the efficiency, while the second question focuses on how methodically the concept of efficiency can be used in fixture design. The results presented in this thesis are based on four experimental studies carried out in the automotive and aerospace industries covering different aspects of modular and reconfigurable fixtures with manual, automated and active features. Based on these experimental studies, seven criteria regarding the efficiency of flexible fixtures have been identified. These criteria relate to physical flexibility, quality, interactivity, cost, time, modularity and maintenance. Furthermore, the thesis provides the expected states of criteria along with relevant metrics. Subsequently, a design procedure using these metrics is presented based on the characteristics of a manufacturing system, in order to identify the most efficient fixturing solution. Finally, the efficiency of flexible fixtures is found to be correlated to the individual and unique needs of a manufacturing system. Consequently, the ability of a fixture designer to understand and adapt to those needs is the key to increased efficiency; thus, the applicability of flexible fixtures.

design

reconfigurable

Flexible

fixture

efficiency

tooling

Virtual Development Laboratory, Hörsalsvägen 7A, Chalmers.
Opponent: Assoc. Prof. Magnus Karlberg, Department of Engineering Sciences and Mathematics, Luleå University of Technology

Author

Ilker Erdem

Chalmers, Product and Production Development, Production Systems

Automated Flexible Tooling for Wing Box Assembly: Hexapod Development Study

SAE Technical Papers,; Vol. 2016-October(2016)

Journal article

Development of Affordable Reconfigurable Tooling in Car Manufacturing Cells – A Case Study

23rd International Conference for Production Research, ICPR 2015, Manila, Philippines, 2-6 August 2015,; (2015)

Paper in proceeding

Development of Automated Flexible Tooling as Enabler in Wing Box Assembly

Procedia CIRP. 6th CIRP Conference on Assembly Technologies and Systems, CATS 2016; Gothenburg; Sweden; 16 May 2016 through 18 May 2016,; Vol. 44(2016)p. 233-238

Paper in proceeding

Erdem I, Levandowski C, Berlin C, Kihlman H, Stahre J. A Novel Comparative Design Procedure for Reconfigurable Assembly Fixtures

Subject Categories

Production Engineering, Human Work Science and Ergonomics

Other Engineering and Technologies not elsewhere specified

Driving Forces

Sustainable development

Areas of Advance

Production

Publisher

Chalmers

Virtual Development Laboratory, Hörsalsvägen 7A, Chalmers.

Opponent: Assoc. Prof. Magnus Karlberg, Department of Engineering Sciences and Mathematics, Luleå University of Technology

More information

Created

3/2/2017 2