Abstract
In today's manufacturing industry cost competition is growing severer with the trend in production toward globalization. For high labor wage countries like Japan, low-cost and multifunctional automation technologies are required. This study focuses on the analysis of human dexterousness to develop new automation methods, because workers often find simpler work methods by task learning, and the methods can be clue to low-cost automation. In this study, the new “NAGARA System” in other words, “Station-less Assembly System” in which component parts are assembled directly by the base parts moving on the belt conveyor without positioning, is proposed. In this paper, firstly, the remarkable human characteristics of the manual system are extracted quantitatively. Next, based on the analysis, the new automation system, which introduces a force-changeable gripper and human assembly algorithms, is proposed. Finally, the effectiveness of this system is proven by comparing the productivity and the cost with them of the conventional one.
