Digital product development that combines diverse expertise can strengthen the ability to create products that meet customer demands in a commercially viable way. In the early stages of this process, user requirements are translated into technical specifications that define a feasible product concept. Therefore, concept detailing in these stages is essential for manufacturing, as they impact process selection and resources required to manufacture the product.

Given the high proportion of assembled products, assembly becomes an important manufacturing process to study, especially in terms of deriving and propagating product characteristics relevant to this process throughout product development.

One major research gap is the lack of a unified way to represent and distinguish product characteristics defined during design to facilitate assembly, which later serve as essential information for this process.

Multiple research efforts have addressed this issue by proposing various specialized information models for assembly, yet a suitable way to represent this information integrated with the product model is still missing.

This thesis addresses this issue focusing on handling activities for automated assembly by providing a threefold contribution: identifying a core concept to represent assembly information, proposing a way to incorporate assembly information within the product information model by leveraging an international standard, and gathering industry experts' insights to improve this approach for broad and quick adoption.

The outcome of this thesis facilitates the integration of stakeholder information early in product development while providing a space to capture design intent. It also streamlines the identification and subsequent extraction of product information that is decisive in designing dedicated specialized equipment, such as feeders, grippers, and fixtures. Thus, this thesis enables enhancement of communication between design and manufacturing and simultaneously bridges the product and resource life cycles.

Digital produktutveckling som kombinerar expertkompetenser kan stärka förmågan att skapa produkter som möter kunders krav på ett kommersiellt gångbart sätt. I de tidiga faserna av denna process omsätts användarkrav till tekniska specifikationer som definierar ett genomförbart produktkoncept. Därför är konceptdetaljeringen i dessa faser avgörande för tillverkningen, eftersom de påverkar val av processer och de resurser som krävs för att tillverka produkten.

Givet den höga andelen monterande produkter blir montering en avgörande tillverkningsprocess att studera, särskilt när det gäller att härleda och fördela produktegenskaper relevanta för denna process genom hela produktutvecklingen.

Ett stort forskningsgap är avsaknaden av ett enhetligt sätt att representera och särskilja de produktegenskaper som definierats under konstruktion för att underlätta monteringen och som senare utgör väsentlig information för denna process.

Flera forskningsinsatser har fokuserat på detta problem genom att föreslagit olika specialiserade informationsmodeller för montering, men ett lämpligt sätt att representera denna information integrerat med produktmodellen saknas fortfarande.

Denna avhandling adresserar detta problem genom att fokusera på hantering vid automatiserad montering genom att ge ett tredelat bidrag: identifiera ett huvudkoncept för att representera monteringsinformation, föreslå ett sätt att integrera monteringsinformation inom produktinformationsmodellen genom att utnyttja en internationell standard, och samla insikter från experter i industrin för att förbättra denna metod för ett brett och snabbt införande.

Resultatet av denna avhandling underlättar integrationen av intressenters information tidigt i produktutvecklingen samtidigt som det ger ett utrymme för att fånga konstruktionens avsikt. Det effektiviserar också identifieringen och den efterföljande användningen av produktinformation som är avgörande för konstruktion av specialiserad utrustning, såsom matare, gripare och hållare. På så sätt möjliggör denna avhandling förbättrad kommunikationen mellan konstruktion och tillverkning och skapar samtidigt en brygga mellan produktens och resursernas livscykler.

Modern manufacturing processes' increasing complexity and variability demand advanced systems capable of real-time monitoring, adaptability, and data-driven decision-making. This paper introduces a novel runtime condition model to enhance interoperability, data integration, and decision support within intelligent manufacturing environments. The model encapsulates key manufacturing elements, including asset management, relationships, key performance indicators (KPIs), capabilities, data structures, constraints, and configurations. A key innovation is the integration of a knowledge graph enriched with embedding techniques, enabling the inference of missing relationships, dynamic reasoning, and predictive analytics. The proposed model was validated through a case study conducted in collaboration with TQC Automation Ltd., using their MicroApplication Leak Test System (MALT). A dataset of over 9,000 unique test configurations demonstrated the model's capabilities in representing runtime conditions, managing operational parameters, and optimising test configurations. The enriched knowledge graph facilitated advanced analyses, providing actionable insights into test outcomes and enabling proactive decision-making. Empirical results showcase the model's ability to harmonise diverse data sources, infer missing connections, and improve runtime adaptability. This study highlights the potential of combining runtime modelling with knowledge graphs to address the challenges of modern manufacturing. Future research will explore the model's application to additional domains, integration with larger datasets, and the use of machine learning for enhanced predictive capabilities.

The early stages of product design are critical for incorporating manufacturing perspectives. Recognizing the significance of assembly indiscrete product manufacturing, the study emphasizes the need to consider the intricacies of assembly early in the design stages. While existing research has addressed assembly features, especially for insertion, this study focuses on handling features, seeking to bridge the gap in their comprehensive representation within the product model. Based on a relational analysis, product characteristics relevant for handling were identified and represented by using a modeling strategy that facilitates their timely addition to the product model. A case study was developed to demonstrate its application. The main contributions of this work comprise an extensive list of product characteristics related to handling processes, a proposal for integrating these characteristics into the product model, and a collaborative way to define product features during product design. Future research directions point to the establishment of a model-based definition for assembly processes, paving the way for enhanced cross-disciplinary communication in the fields of product design and assembly planning.

Modern manufacturing has to cope with dynamic and changing circumstances. Market fluctuations, the effects caused by unpredictable material shortages, highly variable product demand, and worker availability all require system robustness, flexibility, and resilience. To adapt to these new requirements, manufacturers should consider investigating, investing in, and implementing system autonomy. Autonomy is being adopted in multiple industrial contexts, but divergences arise when formalizing the concept of autonomous systems. To develop an implementation of autonomous manufacturing systems, it is essential to specify what autonomy means, how autonomous manufacturing systems are different from other autonomous systems, and how autonomous manufacturing systems are identified and achieved through the main features and enabling technologies. With a comprehensive literature review, this paper provides a definition of autonomy in the manufacturing context, infers the features of autonomy from different engineering domains, and presents a five-level model of autonomy — associated with maturity levels for the features — to ensure the complete identification and evaluation of autonomous manufacturing systems. The paper also presents the evaluation of a real autonomous system that serves as a use-case and a validation of the model.

Product development requires sharing information of a diverse nature between several actors. Since the new products resulting from this process often require assembly as part of their manufacturing processes, it becomes necessary to promote a functional information representation for the assembly domain. Several authors have proposed different core concepts to represent the information related to assembly. However, the resulting body of knowledge is fragmented and lacks a unified concept and definition of the information this concept should contain to be broadly adopted by the academy and industry. This study aims to identify and characterize the core concepts used to enclose the assembly information (e.g., assembly features, ports, connectors, and others) by conducting a literature review in the domain of discrete manufacturing, considering the period between 1985 and 2022. It was found that the literature is rich in concepts but often diverging: a clear depiction of the assembly information required by the involved stakeholders during the whole product development process remains elusive. This work's contribution addresses this gap by identifying the perspectives from which the assembly information can be studied, and the information required to describe the assembly process fully. The resulting information requirements were used to assess the existing approaches addressing assembly information representation. These findings can be used as a base to establish a comprehensive assembly information representation in the future.

Product development is a collaboration-intensive process resulting in a novel or enhanced product that satisfies the customers' needs. To meet those needs, functional requirements are defined, which ultimately determine the product's physical characteristics and manufacturing. However, the functional and other non-geometrical information becomes less noticeable as the process advances, since the primary representation of the product design in the latter stages of the product development is often a purely geometrical model, causing information fragmentation. This fragmentation hinders the collaboration between different stakeholders while neglecting valuable product information that could facilitate its manufacturing. Research to date has not yet provided a suitable way to link the geometrical model of a product with its non-geometrical information. Focused on the assembly domain, this work proposes a way to integrate functional information into the product's geometrical model by using assembly features, which could be employed in the latter stages to extract process constraints and additional product details relevant to assembly process planning, as shown in the developed case study. This paper provides new insights into the value of the assembly feature as a functional information carrier and a tool for improving the collaboration between different stakeholders during the product development process.

Mass customization demands a wide range of product variants being provided by the manufacturer in a short time. To respond to that, companies embrace approaches such as product platforms and modularization. This impacts the product development process (PDP), especially at the design stage. A major concern is the definition of component and system interfaces since these become essential inputs for later stages. Yet, a suitable method to describe the interfaces, represent them, and share them within a product model is still elusive. Since the information enclosed in the interface is multi-faceted, ranging from geometry to function or kinematics, it can be adjusted or enriched in every stage of product development. Then, it is crucial to understand how this information can support product preparation and planning, as well as how it can be reused in product design or redesign. Thus, this work aims to assess the extent to which these factors were considered in the assembly domain. The study started by presenting current practices on representing the interfaces in the product design and continued by exploring how the information on the interfaces can be used for assembly planning. Subsequently, it proposed a way to represent the knowledge enclosed in the interface and concluded by explaining how this knowledge can be exploited by different stakeholders to improve the process planning and the overall assembly system. A case study shows the application of the proposed approach. Overall, the results showed the benefits of a better representation of interfaces in product design, specifically for the assembly domain, aiming to contribute to defining a strategy for knowledge reuse in manufacturing.

Information exchange is a fundamental process for manufacturing enterprises, especially when the product data needs to be exchanged between different domains, areas, or external suppliers during the product lifecycle. Lack of standardized information management processes, undefined information requirements from both parties, and incompatible formats to exchange information lead to delays in product development and therefore, economic losses. An alternative that has demonstrated benefits when carrying product manufacturing information is the Model-based definition (MBD) approach. A preparatory step to structure an MBD application for a specific domain is to define its data content, which can be built upon a categorization of product requirements for the target domain. The presented study proposes a method that starts by studying the interactions between involved stakeholders and the related information exchanged at each stage of the development of a component, and results in a categorization of requirements to support assembly planning, enhancing product realization. Enhanced product realization can lead to shorter development time, better supplier compliance to the requirements, and fewer errors in the physical interfaces. Future work is to use the categorized requirements as a base to build an MBD structure for exchanging assembly-related information.

Collaborative manufacturing environments demand high information utilization and exchange. Information has become a relevant company asset, including the one derived during product design; however, capturing and sharing this information is still challenging, especially in the early design stages. While previous studies have examined information representation, there has been limited involvement in specific domains, such as automatic assembly and its subprocesses, despite the long-standing demand. Integrating information related to handling processes (fixturing, feeding, and grasping) to the product design is lacking, translating into numerous design iterations to comply with production needs overlooked by the product designer and delaying the design of corresponding tooling. This study set out to define the requirements and assess the feasibility of implementing a system that captures feeding, fixturing, and grasping information. A proof of concept was developed based on these findings by exploiting the information representation and presentation capabilities of the ISO 10303 standard. Unlike existing approaches tested in other domains, this proposal used a structured model to represent information appropriately based on its corresponding data type. This model then visually conveyed the information to the user, facilitating its accessibility and promoting its utilization. Besides demonstrating the benefit of using a neutral format to carry product manufacturing information from early design stages, the authors advocate for the adoption of 3D product representations and their further exploitation to facilitate subsequent design activities.

Configure-to-Order (CTO) assembly systems, which enable rapid deployment and reconfiguration, are essential for meeting the growing demand for product customization through Plug & Produce strategies. However, achieving swift and cost-effective reconfiguration remains a significant challenge in manufacturing. While general-purpose machines offer considerable flexibility, the design, production, and installation of product-specific tools, such as fixtures, frequently create bottlenecks in the reconfiguration process. Despite advancements in Computer-Aided Fixture Design (CAFD) software tools, substantial human effort is still required to access, organize, and process necessary information before initiating the design process. Model-Based Definition (MBD) presents a promising solution by ensuring continuity across the digital thread, improving data organization, and enhancing CAFD integration. However, the lack of a standardized MBD dataset and a comprehensive framework for CAFD hinders its full potential. This study addressed this gap by promoting the widespread adoption of MBD. Initially, a literature review established the semantic content of the MBD dataset. The neutral STEP Application Protocol (AP) 242 was then employed to enhance the representation of complex data, ensuring interoperability. A proof-of-concept CAFD tool, developed in Python, demonstrated this interoperability by integrating established CAFD methodologies with commercial software to automate non-value-added tasks, such as the configuration of Computer-Aided Design (CAx) systems. This innovation streamlines documentation processes and paves the way for greater process automation. Future work could build upon these findings by incorporating industry-specific datasets, fully structuring an exhaustive MBD dataset within STEP AP242, or leveraging enriched 3D models to further advance CAFD digital thread workflow.