Fixtures are used to position and hold parts for a series of assembly opera
tions. In automotive body assembly, these fixtures conventionally have been
dedicated, therefore they must be replaced whenever there are model change
s in an auto body assembly plant. In recent years, however, the automotive
industry has been changing from high volume to small-to-medium volume produ
ction per model with an increasing number of models because customer tastes
are diversifying. To cope with this change, auto companies need to be capa
ble of producing a variety of models in small-to-medium volume, and they re
ly on flexible assembly lines and flexible fixtures. These flexible fixture
s use robots as programmable fixture elements so that they can be reprogram
med for different stamped sheet metal parts. When designing flexible fixtur
es, fixture designers need to be concerned with fixture workspaces for a se
t of different stampings. However, existing fixture design methods address
the fixturing of one stamping only. This paper presents a system that fixtu
re designers can use to synthesize flexible fixture workspaces for a set of
different stampings. Based on circular workspaces for flexible fixture rob
ots, this system finds optimal workspace sizes and centers on a fixture bas
e plate with a graphical display for visual checking. This system is simple
to use and produces results quickly.