Reconfiguring and ramping-up ventilator production in the face of COVID-19: Can robots help?

•As the COVID-19 pandemic expands, causing a shortage of medical supplies, a key piece of equipment has been ventilator.•The manufacturing systems of today are designed for mass production with minimum product variability at competitive cost•Besides high potential of cobotic automation, their applic...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of manufacturing systems 2021-07, Vol.60, p.864-875
Main Authors: Malik, Ali Ahmad, Masood, Tariq, Kousar, Rehana
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cobot
Collaborative robot
COVID-19
Guidelines
Pandemic
Production
Ramp-up
Reconfigure
Robot
Simulation
Social distancing
Ventilator
Workstation design
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Summary:•As the COVID-19 pandemic expands, causing a shortage of medical supplies, a key piece of equipment has been ventilator.•The manufacturing systems of today are designed for mass production with minimum product variability at competitive cost•Besides high potential of cobotic automation, their application in assembly is limited•Collaborative robots can form reconfigurable manufacturing systems and can ramp up production.•Modularization, plug-&-play hardware and digital twins are key enablers for fast (re) configuration of cobots. As the COVID-19 pandemic expands, the shortening of medical equipment is swelling. A key piece of equipment getting far-out attention has been ventilators. The difference between supply and demand is substantial to be handled with normal production techniques, especially under social distancing measures in place. The study explores the rationale of human-robot teams to ramp up production using advantages of both the ease of integration and maintaining social distancing. The paper presents a model for faster integration of collaborative robots and design guidelines for workstations. The scenario is evaluated for an open source ventilator through continuous human-robot simulation and amplification of results in a discrete event simulation.
ISSN:0278-6125
1878-6642
1878-6642
DOI:10.1016/j.jmsy.2020.09.008