Subassembly identification for assembly sequence planning

Assembly sequence planning is a typical of NP-complete problem which will spend a large amount of computation time or disk memory once the assembly becomes complex. The complex product or assembly is composed of many parts and the number of assembly relationships between them is numerous. To decrease the difficulty of assembly sequence planning of complex products, the subassembly identification methods are focused on. It aims to decompose a complex assembly into a limitative number of subassemblies. Each subassembly contains a relatively smaller number of parts and the assembly sequence planning tasks of them can be handled efficiently. The subassembly identification methods for assembly sequence planning are summarized with respect to assembly constraints. The assembly constraints including the topological, geometrical, and process constraints are considered and merged into the assembly models for subassembly identification. The assembly models are generally represented as directed or undirected assembly diagrams including these considered constraints. It is generally taken as the input information to generate appropriate subassemblies complying with the requirements. The graph theories and graph search algorithms, integer programming methods and the emerging techniques, such as the knowledge-based methods, the intelligent algorithms and the virtual technology, etc. are advocated to resolve the subassembly identification problem with respect to the assembly models. The hierarchical assembly tree is widely used to represent the results of subassembly identification. These useful methods are not only used to subassembly identification for assembly sequence planning, but also successfully referred to by product disassembly.