The assembly line is a very big idea, which includes both the composition of the assembly line itself and the management part.
The management part is just like what my friend said above, including production management, quality management, capacity optimization, material logistics and so on. This part is mainly by the production planning, production process and other departments responsible for. We won't talk about this part, it's not your main concern, but I hope you know that it's also part of the assembly line design.
And you have a problem understanding the equipment that makes up the assembly line itself.
You must be very clear about one thing:
All the equipment on a good assembly line should all consist of standard parts, standard equipment.
It is a mistake to think of the design of an assembly line as the design of the equipment. All the equipment is to fulfill the function of the assembly line, so the main body is the function rather than equipment. The design of an assembly line is not designed for the equipment, but for the function.
The equipment designed to fulfill the function is the scope of mechanical equipment. I said in the message, the current large number of non-standard assembly line equipment, the reason is because of our low level of assembly line design, and because of the site, logistics, personnel operation and other reasons, can not use standard parts. Later only derived from the product, in the machinery of developed countries, the use of non-standard assembly line equipment is very, very little.
Here we also need to distinguish between assembly line equipment standard equipment and non-standard equipment.
Each customer may have a small change in demand, which is reasonable, should not be regarded as non-standard. For example, the conveyor belt of the assembly line, all the assembly line is similar, if the family to be high tens of centimeters, the family requires a few dozen centimeters long, this is a reasonable demand, does not change the nature of the standard equipment.
If this conveyor belt needs to be automatically classified, that the need for conveyor belts to be able to turn the cycle, then the functionality of the differences that arise, it is no longer standard equipment, into a customized non-standard equipment.
If this happens above, and in many developed countries, they will split the functionality into two components, a standard conveyor belt, and the other is the sorting equipment. In that case, both devices are standardized. Their assembly lines can often be quickly disassembled and shifted because their equipment is all put together one by one.
That is to say, in fact, we currently have a lot of non-standard equipment is because we want to set up a large number of functions, this function is also to be, that function is also to be, and finally come up with a thing that has a lot of functions, which is not appropriate to be categorized into which category. So a large number of non-standard equipment assembly line, often dismantle can not be dismantled, installed on the never move. Of course, this is not absolute, depending on the function of the integration to what extent, to see the assembly line itself to what degree of complexity.
The foreigners are not very fond of such things, but our domestic manufacturers are very fond of them. The problems that may follow will not be mentioned, but such a demand has given rise to the production of non-standard equipment for the assembly line.
In the engineering of a company designing and preparing an assembly line, manufacturing engineers, mechanical engineers, and equipment engineers are all involved in the process.
The definition of the function of the manufacturing engineers to complete, the connection of equipment and auxiliary tools have mechanical engineers to complete, and equipment engineers to participate in the whole process, especially in the maintenance of equipment, use, maintenance of the feasibility of the convenience to provide reasonable advice.
Many companies have mechanical engineers and manufacturing engineers spend their energy on the product, so it is true that many companies have thrown these things to the equipment engineers to do.
Most companies have their assembly line equipment outsourced, so the individual engineers just have to fulfill the above duties; if the company is going to set up its own assembly line equipment, then the main work is done by the equipment engineers, with the other engineers acting as support.
I don't know if you can understand if I say this ......