A novel hybrid assembly method to reduce operational costs of selective assembly

Selective assembly is a technique whereby components are smartly matched depending on their measured feature values. Although it can reduce scrap by allowing more relaxed tolerances on components when compared to traditional random assembly, it is often not adopted due to the high related operational costs. Therefore, this study proposes a novel hybrid strategy whereby a number of traditional assembly rounds are performed before switching to selective assembly. At each round, the components which did not lead to a feasible assembly are put into their respective unmatched piles and are used for the next traditional assembly round. When N such rounds have been performed, the remaining unmatched components will finally be assembled via selective assembly.