Automation solutions for a bicycle factory

Bicycles might seem quite an old and outdated transportation when compared to modern vehicles, but its role for a sustainable mobility chance has been recently acknowledged, thanks to an increased sensibility towards environmental issues. In this regard, the bicycle is quite unmatched, considering that in its life cycle the only CO2 emitted is the one released during its production. Moreover, innovation has affected bicycles too, making them anything but an old and outdated vehicle. In fact, with systems like the pedal assistance, the raw driving power of a bike has been separated by that of the leg muscles of its rider: nowadays, people can easily ride steep roads without fatigue and way faster than they would otherwise. Also, various systems are being implemented in various cities (though mostly large ones) to incentivize its use, such as innovative and easy to use bike sharing services. Of course, in order to sustain innovations in a product, innovations in its production process need to be implemented as well. In this environment, the Cicli Lombardo S.p.A. is a promising enterprise, which delivers a high-quality product, and that has been constantly growing in the past two decades, thanks to its efforts in the fields of marketing and innovation. Plus, its interest in environmental matters and sustainability makes its products special. What this company asked us was to find creative solutions in order to modernize and automatize production processes that are currently performed mostly manually. With the help of my academic tutor, Professor Stefano Mauro, in this thesis I was able to illustrate the production process and look for the best automation solution for each case observed. In the end, I propose a project that I find the most compelling for the company to implement: a system to facilitate picking of carts containing the most requested components between two assembling areas.