Analysis and design of an integrated material handling system

Abstract

An integrated manufacturing system with a finite capacity consisting of a set of work stations, a loading station and unloading stations linked by a material handling system is considered. Each work station has a local storage, a set of flexible machines capable of processing workpieces belonging to the same family of parts and an unloading station. Each workpiece requires only one stage of operation which may receive it from either one of the work stations. The integrated material handling system consists of a set of line conveyors, each with a specified length, velocity and capacity. In this paper, an open queueing network model is developed to analyse the effects of the loading, the material handling, the storage and the processing operations on the asymptotic performance of the system. Furthermore, a methodology for controlling the congestion along the material handling system is suggested. Numerical results are also provided and the approximations results are compared against those from a simulation study.

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