Autonomous Remanufacture of Complex Products (ARCP)

The remanufacturing sector, particular those who focus on complex products such as engine assemblies, are experiencing rapid reductions in production efficiency, that leads to restricted growth. These issues are arising through the need to remanufacture increasingly higher levels of variation in product designs and damage states of end-of-life cores. The ARCP project will undertake technical, operational and commercial feasibility studies to identify the functional, operational and economic suitability of using autonomous robots and autonomous operations planning systems to undertake the remanufacturing of complex products, i.e. product-to-component disassembly, operations planning of component remanufacturing & reconditioning processes and component-to-product reassembly. Feasibility studies will include for example quality capability analyses and the effects of product, process & demand variability on ARCP processes. Industrial research will create ARCP components for inclusion in feasibiity studies, e.g. trials to identify the part design ranges of robots. ARCP will, therefore, meet an industry need for improved remanufacturing efficiency and flexibility and open up both national and international market opportunities for the industrial remanufacturing partners.