Abstract
Mass management and production of customized products requires material handling systems (MHS) which are flexible and responsive enough to accommodate dynamic and real-time changes in material handling tasks. Towards this goal, we develop a novel control framework to improve the flexibility and responsiveness of material handling systems. Flexibility is achieved by using multi-commodity flow network optimization to find the most optimized job sequence in terms of minimum transfer steps. Responsiveness is achieved by the use of a matrix-based discrete event (DE) supervisory controller to dispatch equipment control commands in real-time based on real-time sensor information, according to the optimized sequence. By modeling the MHS network as multi-commodity flow network to define job routes, and using the matrix-based DE controller to implement the job routes in real-time, the users achieve a seamlessly integrated solution to control the execution of transfer jobs that covers the supervisory planning stage through the real-time actual dispatching decisions. The proposed control framework is evaluated on an industrial case study of airfreight terminal material handling and simulation results show its effectiveness.
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This work was supported by the National Science Foundation ECS-1128050, the Army Research Office W91NF-05-1-0314 and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research FA9550-09-1-0278.
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Joe, Y.Y., Gan, O.P. & Lewis, F.L. Multi-commodity flow dynamic resource assignment and matrix-based job dispatching for multi-relay transfer in complex material handling systems (MHS). J Intell Manuf 25, 681–697 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10845-012-0713-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10845-012-0713-y