A heuristic transporter routing model for manufacturing facility design

In this study, a transporter routing problem is analyzed and adapted for use in manufacturing facility design. Given fixed facility layout and predetermined material flow paths, this study determines the minimum number of transporters required to transfer material within a given manufacturing facility with minimal handling effort. The manufacturing facility design problem is particularly complex and involves the sub-problems such as design of the material network and the transporter routing problem, which provides the fleet size and the routing of each transporter over the flow network. The problem is formulated as an integer program. To solve the problem, we used a heuristic and integrated vehicle routing model. We also developed a heuristic solution program and several tests along with an industrial example to indicate the effectiveness of this method.