Lineless Mobile Assembly Systems are a new paradigm addressing the production of large, high-value components with a high degree of automation and traceability at lot sizes as small as 1. This ambition is supported by a more cost-efficient and sustainable use of capacity-limited assembly resources as well as an increasing awareness for in-process data availability, analysis and continuity enabling (semi-) automated model- and knowledge-driven decisions.

Deploying mobile, standardized automation resources in conjunction with unrestricted and dynamic process planning, resolves in fixed shop floor layouts with monument based automation. For this scenario, model-based system control is mandatory for reliable and resilient processes, which in turns demands elaborated models evaluable with traceable real-time information. Distributed Sensor Services complement this demand constituting a ubiquitously available metrology-based reference frame and infrastructure. The service-oriented architecture and sensor models allow for physical distribution and heterogeneity of sensors, diverse network and persistence interfaces and flexible utilization of computational capabilities on different hardware.

With 5G, a key technology for enabling data-intensive industrial environments with numerous mobile resources has recently become available, motivating the presented concept for and prototyping of future assembly systems for, among others, automotive and aerospace use-cases.