Selection of Industrial Robots for Packaging using Combinatorial Mathematics-Based Approach

Abstract

The customer oriented manufacturing has prompted selection of industrial robots predominantly to cater demand of customer's in real time. The selection of a robot in today’s manufacturing environment has become more challenging due to increasing specifications and complexity of the robots. Purchasing industrial robots being long term strategy and a costly affair, it is important to base selection on essential attributes for correct and reliable selection. This research study can be used to standardize the robot selection procedure when the manufacturing firm has decided to use the robot for a particular operation. This will help the industrial robot user to save time by providing a tool for selecting the robot system most suitable for operational needs. This study aims to solve a robot selection problem for Packing and Palletizing. Combinatorial Mathematics-Based Approach (CMBA) method is used to select the most convenient robot among three alternatives for a given industrial application.