Progress in Materials Handling and Logistics, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1989 Progress in Materials Handling and Logistics Series, Vol. 1

Material handling and logistics have become especially important to industrialists because of the competitive advantage that results from using the right methods to provide the right amount of the right material at the right place, at the right time, in the right condition, in the right sequence, in the right orientation, and at the right cost. But, what are the right methods? The emergence of sophisticated control systems, coupled with advances in hardware design, has resulted in a wide variety oftechno­ logical alternatives availablefor practically any application. Yet, with the emergence of just-in-time methods and the apparent success of the firms that have relied on the use of people and" simple" rules, rather than technology, the proper role of hardware and software in material handling and logistics is open to debate. Despite all that has been accomplished to date, the design of material handling and logistics systems remains an art as well as a science. Regardless of whether it is people, conveyors, lift trucks, robots, guided vehicles, laser scanners, storage/retrieval machines, carousels, voice encoding, machine vision, automatic palletizers, or other methods that are appropriate, selecting the right methods for moving, storing, and controlling material is vital. It is important that the selection decision be made after consideration is given to the requirements for amount, material, place, time, condition, sequence, orientation, and cost.

Section One: Guided Vehicle Technology.- Guided Vehicle Technology: From Automated to Autonomous.- The Design and Construction of Three Autonomous Vehicles.- Evaluation of Heuristic Control Strategies for AGVs Under Varying Demand Arrival Patterns.- Towards a Free-Roving Vision-Guided AGV.- Section Two: Robot Technology.- Algorithms and Architectures for Machine Vision.- Increasing the Speed of Computers Using Optics.- Control of High-Speed Material Handling Manipulators.- Experiments on the Control of a Satellite Manipulator.- Section Three: Automated Storage and Retrieval Technology.- Control Design Issues for Material Handling Systems.- The Automation of Material Handling System’s Control Software.- The Analysis of AS/RS Performance.- An Empirical Evaluation of a General Purpose Automated Order Accumulation and Sortation System Used in Batch Picking.- Section Four: Modeling Technology.- Simulating Material Handling Systems.- Networks of Queues with Blocking and Load Balancing.- Manufacturing Systems Modelling: Its Role and Current Issues.- Modeling Flexible Manufacturing Systems Using Product-Form Queueing Networks.- Validation of Manufacturing System Models.- Section Five: Flexible Manufacturing.- Real-Time Adaptive Scheduling in Flexible Manufacturing Systems.- Real-Time Optimization in the Automated Manufacturing Research Facility.- Machine Configuration for Flexible Assembly Systems.- Design and Operating Issues in Flexible Manufacturing.- Section Six: Transportation.- Linehaul-Backhaul: Solutions with Spacefilling Curves.