A Material Handling System Selection Model

A technique is presented which can be used to design, or assist in the design of, an integrated materials handling system for a manufacturing facility or a major department of the facility. The developed procedure selects the materials handling equipment to be used to perform a given set of moves in order to miriimize the system's costs associated with the handling, assuming the plant arrangement remains fixed. To demonstrate the selection procedure, an example problem is presented. Since the method is heuristic, no claim of optimality is made.