Automated quality

Starting point and motivation

Due to the many manual process steps in today’s wire harness production, a complex manual EOL check is necessary. Features such as component miniaturisation also increase the physical and mental effort for the workers. This results in an increasing risk of error generation and resulting higher costs due to more rework.

The envisaged (partial) automation of the production process opens up new possibilities for quality assurance in upstream production steps such as crimping or cutting by monitoring the production process. Furthermore, the resulting end-to-end documentation in the automation of the test steps can be used as a basis for precise traceability in the event of a fault.

Eventually, a completely automated manufacturing process should make the EOL check superfluous, but this is not yet feasible in the foreseeable future.

Current working focuses

The aim of the sub-project is to identify possibilities for integrating test steps into the wire harness manufacturing process, building on the current EOL test. This involves analysing requirements that must be fulfilled by the production process and means in order to relocate the test steps.

Outlook

The next steps for SP5 include the basic development of information models related to the quality aspects that need to be included in the management shell. The management shell describes the entire life cycle of a product and ensures interoperability across manufacturers. Specifically, a complete on-board electrical system is to be mapped as a digital twin and its quality characteristics also need to be taken into account.