R. Arifin et Pj. Egbelu, Determination of vehicle requirements in automated guided vehicle systems:a statistical approach, PROD PLAN C, 11(3), 2000, pp. 258-270
Interest in automated material handling systems has been increasing in manu
facturing and assembly facilities. Automated guided vehicle system (AGVS) i
s one such material handling system. One of the decisions in implementing a
n AGVS is to determine the number of vehicles required for a facility at th
e early planning stage. This paper undertakes the development of an analyti
cal model using a regression technique to estimate the number of vehicles r
equired by a facility, The model attempts to use characteristics of a facil
ity for which an automated guided vehicle system is under consideration to
determine the number of vehicles required. Although several facility charac
teristics were investigated, only a few were finally included in the model
based on the statistical significance of their contributions to predicting
vehicle requirements. The predictive abilities of several models hypothesiz
ed were compared with results obtained through simulation on some test faci
lities. Based on the results of the comparisons, a final model was adopted.
The vehicle requirements predicted by the model differed from the results
obtained from the simulation model only slightly. The results show that reg
ression analysis provides an alternative and promising approach for estimat
ing vehicle requirements for an AGVS, especially during the initial phase o
f a system design.