The growing number of product variants, smaller lot sizes, accelerated time-to-market and shorter life-cycles of products have led to increasing demands on assembly equipment and concepts. They must be highly flexible with regard to product variants, the low-cost adaptability of products, and quick amortisation within a sustainable equipment concept. In order to master these challenges, innovative approaches and technologies are required. The performance of existing automation techniques is often insufficient. As a solution to this problem, hybrid, i.e. human-integrated, approaches are proposed.

The idea is to combine human flexibility, intelligence and skills with the advantages of sophisticated technical systems. Such systems should help the human worker instead of replacing him. Intelligent Assist Systems (IAS) offer a rational, advanced method for the assembly of complex products on demand, at significantly reduced cost. Since today neither the technology nor the tools for the planning and management of IAS are available, the aim of the project is their prototypical development, including demonstrations based on use-cases. One breakthrough of this project is to fill the gap between manual and automated assembly by introducing novel IAS technology and providing planning and integration tools to make this new technology applicable. A second breakthrough is to achieve the reconfigurability of assembly systems and the reusability of assembly equipment. On the one hand, this is related to a modular structure of assembly systems, including standard hardware- and software-interfaces of assembly equipment. On the other hand, methods and tools are needed for reconfiguration planning, re-programming, life-cycle and equipment management, and knowledge bases for assembly solutions. Each of these breakthroughs will lead to an increase in production capacity and productivity, to reduce investment and re-arrangement costs, and to react more quickly to market demands.

In order to spread the ideas of this novel technology and to initiate a societal dialogue, an advisory board has been established in PISA integrating the social partners (employers and unions), an organisation of technical experts in the relevant industries and occupational safety and health administrations. Since PISA addresses the collaboration of human workers and machines, safety aspects are of central importance. In order to reach the envisaged project goals, broad know-how in various scientific, engineering, technologies from different branches is required. Partners selected for their practical and scientific perspectives provide this knowledge. The project involves 4 large companies, 7 SMEs, and 7 research institutes from 7 European countries. The integrated project approach enables parallel work on all subprojects and is therefore most efficient. The breakthrough of this IP will be the development of innovative Intelligent Assist Systems (IAS) technology and the related methods and tools for planning, integration and reusability of assembly equipment. The results are flexible, cost-effective and highly productive solutions. Human integrated solutions require lower investment and are much more flexible compared with fully automated systems. This results in highly productive and technologically advanced workplaces. Their planning, design and operation require both engineering know-how and human skills which avoid the outsourcing of such workplaces to low-cost labour countries outside Europe.