MDL+ a manufacturing description language to describe and control assembling tasks in industry 4.0

Abstract

The assembly of products or components by operators in industries is a complex task with recurring problems. In these processes, operators often make errors that can lead to defective products. Therefore, they need to be inspected later to verify their correct assembly. The main problems are caused by several reasons including high employee turnover, lack of experience in manufacturing specific products or confusion in interpreting instructions to assemble similar components. In this paper, a novel structured language aimed to describe the required actions to manufacture a product in industrial assembly environments is presented. The main contribution is to provide a formal language to feed automatic systems that can verify through visual control whether the actions performed by the operator are carried out following the standard described by this language. In general, the use of this formal language will allow to minimize the negative impact of errors during assembly and to reduce waste in many forms in the industry.