Minimization of acquisition and operational costs in horizontal material handling system design

This paper considers the problem of minimizing the fixed cost of acquiring material handling transporters and the operational cost of material transfe r in a manufacturing system. This decision problem, which arises during man ufacturing facility design, is modeled using an integer programming formula tion. Since the problem is NP-complete, two efficient heuristics are develo ped to solve it. Computational complexity, worst-case performance analysis, and extensive computational tests are provided for both heuristics. The re sults indicate that the proposed methods are well suited for large-scale ma nufacturing applications.