• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.16 no.11
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• pp.22-35
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• 1999

The block assembly process takes more than half of the total shipbuilding processes. Therefore, it is very important to have a practically useful block assembly process planning system which can build plans of maximum efficiency with minimum man-hours required. However, the process plans are often not readily executable in the assembly shops due to severe imbalance of workloads. This problem arises because the process planning is done on block by block basis in current practice without paying any attention to the load distribution among the assembly shops. this paper presents the development of an automated hull block assembly process planning system which results in the most effective use of production resources and also produces plans that enable efficient time management. If the load balance of assembly shops is to be considered at the time of process planning, the task becomes complicated because of the increased computational complexity. To solve this problem, a new approach is adopted in this research in which the load balancing function and process planning function are iterated alternately providing to each other contexts for subsequent improvement. The result of case study with the data supplied from the shipyard shows that the system developed in this research is very effective and useful.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.450-457
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• 2018

The determination of assembly sequence in general mechanical assemblies plays an important role in terms of manufacturing cost, duration and quality. In the production of ships and offshore plants, the consideration of productivity factors and welding deformation is crucial in determining the optimal assembly sequence. In shipbuilding and offshore industries, most assembly sequence planning has been done according to engineers' decisions based on extensive experience. This may result in error-prone planning and sub-optimal sequence, especially when dealing with unfamiliar block assemblies composed of dozens of parts. This paper presents an assembly sequence planning method for block assemblies. The proposed method basically considers geometric characteristics of blocks to determine feasible assembly sequences, as well as assembly process and productivity factors. Then the assembly sequence with minimal welding deformation is selected based on simplified welding distortion analysis. The method is validated using an asymmetric assembly model and the results indicate that it is capable of generating an optimal assembly sequence.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.26-31
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• 2004

This paper presents a process planning system that will generate and verify assembly sequences of block assemblies. It consists of a CAD interface system and an assembly sequence planning system. In developing this system, we used an open architecture CAD kernel for the CAD interface system, for visualizing the CAD model and the assembly sequences, and an expert system shell for the assembly sequence planning system. This paper also proposes a framework for the integration of all the steps required to automate the procedures, from design to production. The process planning system is demonstrated by a simple example.

• Korean Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.412-420
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• 2005

The integration of CAD and CAM is critical for computer aided process planning. Recently, STEP has been emerged and utilized as a product data exchange standard format in CAD/CAM areas. The assembly information consists of assembly component relations, assembly features, assembly directions and mating conditions. The purpose of this study is to develop an efficient algorithm to extract assembly information directly from the STEP based files and to generate automatically assembly process plan from the extracted assembly features. The developed algorithms will generate assembly information codes for STEP(AICS). The results from this study can be a reasonable link between design and manufacturing for developing better CAAPP(Computer-Aided Assembly Process Planning) systems.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2010.11a
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• pp.295-296
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• 2010

• IE interfaces
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.375-381
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• 2003

To ensure competitiveness in the modern automotive market, process planning should be performed concurrently with new car developments. In automotive general assembly shops, thus, new business workflows and supporting environments are inevitable to reduce the manufacturing preparation time in developing a new car in the manner of concurrent and collaborative engineering. Since complete process planning for a whole general assembly system is a huge and complex job, several process planners should execute their planning jobs and share information. Therefore, each planner should provide others with his/her results with continuous on-line communication and cooperation. In this research, a web-based system for concurrent and collaborative process planning for automotive general assembly is developed. By using this system, savings in time and cost of assembly process planning are possible, and the reliability of the planning result is improved.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.21 no.7
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• pp.163-170
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• 2004

In order to automatically determine the sequences of block assembly operations in shipbuilding, a process planning system using case-based reasoning (CBR) is developed. A block-assembly planning problem is modeled as a constraint satisfaction problem where the precedence relations between operations are considered constraints. The process planning system generates an assembly sequence by adapting information such as solutions and constraints collected from similar cases retrieved from the case base. In order to find similar cases, the process planning system first matches the parts of the problem and the parts of each case based on their roles in the assembly, and then it matches the relations related to the parts-pairs. The part involved in more operations are considered more important. The process planning system is applied to simple examples fur verification and comparison.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.198-206
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• 2004

To ensure competitiveness in the modem automotive market, process and material planning should be performed concurrently with new car developments. In automotive general assembly shops, thus, new business workflows and supporting environments are inevitable to reduce the manufacturing preparation time in developing a new car in the manner of concurrent and collaborative engineering. Since complete material planning for a whole general assembly system is a huge and complex job, several planners should execute their planning jobs and share information. Therefore, each planner should provide others with his/her results with continuous on-line communication and cooperation. In this research, a web-based system for concurrent and collaborative process and material planning for automotive general assembly via 3D digital mock-up S/W is developed. By using this system, savings in time and cost of process and material planning are possible, and the reliability of the planning result is improved.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.339-350
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• 1994

This paper presents a method for automatic generation of line balanced assembly sequences based on disassemblability and proposes a method of evaluating an assembly work time using neural networks. Since a line balancing problem in flexible assembly system requires a sophisticated planning method, reasoning about line balanced assembly sequences is an important field of concern for planning assembly lay-out. For the efficient inference of line balanced assembly sequences, many works have been reported on how to evaluate an assembly work time at each work station. However, most of them have some limitations in that they use cumbersome user query or approximated assembly work time data without considering assembly conditions. To overcome such criticism, this paper proposes a new approach to mathematically verify assembly conditions based on disassemblability. Based upon the results, we present a method of evaluating assembly work time using neural networks. The proposed method provides an effective means of solving the line balancing problem and gives a design guidance of planning assembly lay-out in flexible assembly application. An example study is given to illustrate the concepts and procedure of the proposed scheme.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.49-64
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• 2003

Although assembly sequence planning is an essential task in assembly process planning, it is known as one of the most difficult and time consuming jobs because its complexity is increased geometrically when the number of parts in an assembly is increased. The purpose of this study is to develop a more efficient algorithm for generating assembly sequences automatically. By considering subassemblies, a new heuristic method generates a preferred parallel assembly sequence that can be used in robotic assembly systems. A parallel assembly sequence concept provides a new representation scheme for an assembly in which the assembly sequence precedence information is not required. After an user inputs both the directional mating relation information and the mating condition information, an assembly product is divided into subgroups if the product has cut-vertices. Then, a virtual disassembly process is executed to generate alternate parallel assembly sequences with intermediate assembly stability. Through searching parts relations in the virtual disassembly process, stable subassemblies are extracted from translation-free parts along disassembling directions and this extraction continues until no more subassemblies are existed. Also, the arithmetic mean parallelism formula as a preference criterion is adapted to select the best parallel assembly sequence among others. Finally a preferred parallel assembly sequence is converted to an assembly BOM structure. The results from this study can be utilized for developing CAAPP(Computer-Aided Assembly Process Planning) systems as an efficient assembly sequence planning algorithm.