Complexity Measures for Assembly Sequences

Our work examines various complexity measures for two-handed assembly sequences. Many present assembly sequencers take a description of a product and output a valid assembly sequence. For many products there exists an exponentially large set of valid sequences, and a natural goal is to use automated systems to attempt to select wisely from the choices. Since assembly sequencing is a preprocessing phase for a long and expensive manufacturing process, any work towards finding a "better" assembly plan is of great value when it comes time to assemble the physical product in mass quantities. We take a step in this direction by introducing a formal framework for studying the optimization of several complexity measures. This framework focuses on the combinatorial aspect of the family of valid assembly sequences, while temporarily separating out the specific geometric assumptions inherent to the problem. With an exponential number of possibilities, finding the true optimal cost solution seems ..