The material handling system design of integrated manufacturing systems

In this paper, a two-stage hierarchical decision scheme is proposed for the problem of material handling system (MHS) design during the initial design phase of integrated manufacturing systems. The first stage deals with selection of material handling equipment to perform various transportation and handling activities, and specification of their important parameters. A parametric minimum convex cost multicommodity flow formulation is proposed for the problem. The second stage deals with the topological design of the MHS. A discrete directed network design on a plane formulation is proposed. Results from graph theory for the above formulation are discussed, and their implications for the topological design of the MHS are pointed out.