Design and Integration of Automation Systems with Manual Operation: Small and Medium Enterprises Issues

Today it is more and more mandatory for all commercial companies to comply with the principles and methodologies of Industry 4.0 and to achieve the related capabilities protecting their competitiveness and taking a leading-edge position on market as regards technologies. Specifically, the whole production and sale system must achieve the fundamental characteristics of Industry 4.0 approach, but specially the manufacturing companies must also change and update their management procedures, internal organization, resource training, assets and all production process to keep safe their current business capacities. This evolution process is even more critical for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME), that traditionally tend to be conservative and to protect their way of operation, usually characterized by a low level of automation. The work presented focuses on the design and integration of a semi-automatic welding cell of train bolster in a SME which is currently realizing a project aimed to the acquisition of Industry 4.0 capabilities, with special focus on manufacturing processes. Among them, one of the most important is the production of welded-steel critical structures, that the Company supplies to prime manufacturer of railway rolling stock systems. The experience gained during the activity, the criticalities due to the integration processes and the adopted design methodologies are here described. The work has been carried out consistently with the Systems Engineering principles, starting from the requirements elicitation and analysis to the systematic approach for the design and integration activities.