Assembly system configuration through Industry 4.0 principles: the expected change in the actual paradigms

Industry 4.0 creates what has been called a “smart factory”. The possibility to a wide data collection from industrial processes makes possible to act smart action related to the system changes. Cyber-Physical Systems monitor physical processes and make possible decentralized decisions or even, in the last stage, a self-smart system adaptation. Thanks to the connectivity of the different production resources (machines, work stations, etc.) it is possible to generate information, to share and provide it and finally to create a smart system in which a predictive and automated decision making process with potential self-reconfiguration of the production system is possible to occur. As consequence Industry 4.0 could strongly impact on the actual assembly paradigms, even in the cases in which the human factor is prevailing, as manual assembly. This paper aims to investigate how these transformations are expected to occur. A future state map of the assembly paradigms as effect of the integration with the Industry 4.0 principles is presented. Moreover, a general architecture to implement Industry 4.0 principles into existing assembly systems is provided, highlighting how the final steps of implementation represented by the Operator Support Systems (OSS) and Self-Adapting Smart Assembly System (SASS) are crucial. A detailed report of a real case study derived by an Italian worldwide industrial refrigerator manufacturer represents a further element of interest of the research and demonstrates the practical implication of the study.