Theoretical Aspect of Assembly

Assembly plays a decisive role in global production in terms of its share in the total costs of the products assembled and in terms of the number of people working in the field. The author of (1) indicates that the percentage of the workers in assembly out of the total number of the workers in manufacturing in the U.S.A. ranged from 26.3% (bicycles) to 45.6% (automobiles), while the cost of the product assembly represented typically more than 50% of the total costs. Despite the above-mentioned importance of assembly in the industry, the discontinuous production processes have not been paid adequate attention until recently. It was sufficient to manufacture parts and then an operative reasonably and inexpensively assembled each product manually. The authors of this paper would like to emphasise “the method of a systemic approach” which focuses upon identifying the key activities to meet the objective. Harmonious interrelations of the activities are often a source of greater profit than in a system where some activities are of the top level while the others are neglected (2). The aim of this paper is to describe theoretical aspects of all the typical activities of the assembly system.