Material Handling

The material handling function looms as an important obstacle that ought to be overcome if we are to attain the future in small- and medium-lot-size manufacturing. Two problem areas about material handling shall be:

• Flexible routing for different parts, and
• Mechanical interfacing of material handling & production systems.

The first of this difficulty involves the capability of the material handling system to deliver different work parts to different cells in the plant according to the specific routing of the part. In conceptual model of automated factory, the various parts and products will each need its own set of processing operations, and the handling system ought to be able to provide these flexible routings. This flexibility shall be achieved by using computer control of the material system. The largely flexible of the material handling systems is an automated guided vehicle system. Due to its flexibility & capability to be controlled by computer, this is one of the fastest-growing segments of the material handling industry today.

The second problem area is the complexity in transferring parts among the material handling systems, production work cells, & the storage systems in the plant. This problem is referred as mechanical interface problem. A mechanical interface is needed each time a part is transferred from one type of system in the factory to another. The transfer ought to be accomplished within certain locational needs. The method of transferring loads among systems in the future automated factory shall probably make use of standard-sized pellets. Several pellets have different fixtures to handle the diverse mixture of products built in factory.