Consider the following manufacturing system described in Askin and Standridge (1993) and shown in Figure 17-5. There are five departments. Material movement between departments is performed using an AGV system.

Each department is 30 feet by 30 feet in size except department 1 which is 30 feet by 60 feet. Pickup and drop off times are 15 seconds.

The problem is to determine the routes taken by AGV's between each pair of stations. In addition, the number of AGV's required in this system as well as the effectiveness of the system as measured by the time from the request to move a load until load movement is completed must be determined. Both the average and maximum times are of interest. If the AGV system as designed proves ineffective, it may be improved by moving pickup and drop off points. The redesign could include having separate pickup and drop off point. A new AGV path could be defined as well.

The simulation study should answer the following questions:

1. Is one AGV sufficient for the current demand or are two AGV's necessary?

2. If demand increases uniformly across all stations by 20%, what adjustments to the system are necessary?

Case Problem Issues

1. Can the same model developed in this chapter be used as is or slightly modified to apply to the case problem? What would the modifications be?

2. What alternative AGV paths should be considered?

3. For each department, what pickup and drop off point locations should be considered?

4. Are there any other performance measures besides load movement time and AGV utilization that could be important?

5. How will verification and validation evidence be obtained?

6. What is the expected number of AGV's required?

7. How will the arrival of load movement requests be modeled?