Increasing the Automation Degree in Wiring Harness Assembly by Extending the Standard Crimping Machines by Developed Assembly Concept

In the automotive industry, the assembly of wiring harnesses is done mostly manually. This leads to high labour costs as well as a high number of defects. In order to minimize these disadvantages, both industry and research made huge efforts in recent decades to increase the level of automation in the assembly of wiring harness modules. The fully automated crimping and blockloading machine e.g. Komax Zeta 656, is already successfully used in the industry as a machine for the automated assembly of small wiring harnesses. But still, there is a great potential to increase efficiency and quality in the assembly of wiring harnesses. This paper presents a newly developed machine concept for the fully automated assembly of wiring harnesses. It is shown that the new system can provide higher production efficiency compared to both the competitive systems and manual assembly. The presented concept also helps saving resources as it uses the standard crimping machine as e.g. Komax Alpha 355 as a basis which is already present in many wiring harness factories. To set up the presented mounting machine the Komax Alpha has not to be fully replaced, but only to be extended by a few components.