Integrating Planning and Design Activities in Material Handling Systems

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This grant provides funding for development of a 'holonic' modeling framework for manufacturing system control. It will be applied to the study of design and planning in the material handling systems domain. Holonic manufacturing systems include individual units (part, material handling device, or machine controllers) that make autonomous decisions based on guidelines or system-wide constraints provided by higher level controllers such as a cell controller or system controller. Entities (e.g, parts) and resources (e.g., material handling devices and machines) are modeled as intelligent agents that function in a cooperative manner so as to accomplish individual as well as cell-wide and system-wide goals. The framework will be used to study the impact of design decisions on planning aspects (e.g., effect of introducing three automated guided vehicles on part transportation time and traffic congestion in a material flow network). In addition to developing a promising, alternative modeling framework, a major part of the research work will focus on developing a prototype simulation model for material handling system design and planning. The model will be extensively validated as part of an assessment effort and tested for stability and convergence. Thus, a generic MHS model will be developed, a prototype of the framework implemented, and experimentation conducted to allow for quantifiable performance assessment. If successful, results of this research will demonstrate applicability of the holonic modeling framework in the material handling systems domain. This in turn will enable researchers to consider its application to higher level integrated manufacturing planning and design problems. This project has the potential of significantly benefitting the material handling industry, including designers, manufacturers and users of materials handling systems.