Industry 4.0 in manual assembly processes – a concept for real time production steering and decision making

Abstract Digitalisation is continuously entering production. However, most concepts are dealing with automated production systems. The aim of this research work is to make more use of digitalisation in manual production. A real-time interface to digital planning is being developed based on different ubiquitous computing devices. An algorithm is able to answer requests and fault reports by the worker immediately. It bases on graph theory to represent the original planning data and a set of rules that allow real-time decision-making. The assembly and integration of Ariane 6 upper composite in the Ariane Group plant in Bremen is used as a case study.