Automation assembly, based on the standardization and interchangeability of components in 19th-century mechanical manufacturing, initially began in the production of small arms and clocks, and later was applied in the automotive industry. In the 20th century, the Ford Motor Company in the United States was the first to establish a mobile assembly line using conveyors, dividing the processes and implementing specialized assembly operations at each stage, which reduced the assembly cycle by about 90% and cut production costs. The emergence and development of interchangeable production and mobile assembly lines paved the way for mass production using automation, leading to the subsequent introduction of simple automated devices such as hopper feeders and automatic screw and nut tightening machines. In the 1960s, with the rapid development of digital control technology, numerically controlled assembly machines with higher automation levels and greater adaptability were introduced, making it possible to adopt automated assembly in the production of a variety of products in batch quantities. In 1982, certain factories in Japan had already started using digital control industrial robots for the automated assembly of various specifications of AC servo motors.
The automation of machine assembly refers to the automation of the machine assembly process. Automated assembly systems can be categorized into two types: the first is a rigid automated assembly system based on mass production assembly, primarily consisting of assembly equipment and process equipment; the second is a flexible assembly system (FAS) based on flexible manufacturing systems, mainly comprising an assembly center and assembly robots. As the global manufacturing industry is shifting towards flexible manufacturing and computer-integrated manufacturing for a variety of products in small batches, the flexible assembly system is the direction of development for automated assembly.
