Assembly Line Design for Electric Driven Vehicles (or Powertrain) : Investigation of using Smart Manufacturing Technologies in Concept Designs for Assembly Lines

Sammanfattning: With the rise of smart manufacturing technologies and a shift towards a new industrial revolution, brings forth many new challenges, one of which is how to adapt and integrate these technologies into existing assembly lines. Scania CV AB has joined this race and, with the help of smart manufacturing solutions, works on increasing efficiency amongst its assembly lines. This thesis is aimed at creating concept designs using different smart manufacturing technologies in the assembly line of a pedal car, to evaluate and adapt the concept suited for a real assembly line. The thesis starts with studying the different smart manufacturing technologies to better understand them and the scientific methods used. This follows up with the methodology where several scientific methods such as morphological matrix and weight based decision making matrix are used to generate and evaluate different concept designs. This is followed by a qualitative analysis that helps in selecting the concept design that best suits the needs of the assembly line under consideration. The different concepts are visualized and the evaluation based on different parameters are discussed. This thesis lays a foundation to realize that an aggregate of an optimized process plan, a continuous improvement strategy and the right use of smart manufacturing technologies contributes to the productivity of the assembly line in the long run.