Automated material handling systems are used in healthcare facilities to optimize flow, minimize workforce requirements, reduce risk of contamination, and work injuries. This paper develops a case study using data from Greenville Memorial Hospital (GMH) South Carolina, USA. The is focused on the delivery surgical carts operating rooms at GMH via Guided Vehicles (AGVs). proposes framework that i...

Facility layout planning plays an important role in the manufacturing process and seriously impacts a company’s profitability. A well-planned layout can significantly reduce the total material handling cost. The purpose of this paper is to develop a two-stage inter-cell layout optimization approach by using one of the popular meta-heuristics — the Ant Colony Optimization algorithm. At the first...

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Purpose The handling of material is a high resource consuming task in many different manufacturing industries and especially in the construction sector. Global demand for material-handling products is projected to rise by 7.0 percent annually until 2014 to a total of $119 billion. Typically, work on the construction site, in the materials distribution process or in the construction materials pr...

When suspended payloads are moved in a material handling environment pendulum like oscillations are naturally introduced. This presents a problem any time especially when expensive and/or delicate objects are moved. In a steel industry environment objects have to be placed in tight locations after finishing up of rolling. Typically an object (rolled coil) is lifted by a hook on the end of a cab...

Effective movement of raw material, semi-finished and finished products plays an important role in successful operation of any manufacturing organization. Material movement from one workstation to another accounts for about 30 to 40% of the cost of final product. Proper methods adopted for material movement are also important for the overall safety of the personnel involved in the manufacturing...

Trip-based material handling systems such as AGV systems or lift trucks are often designed with a given flow matrix (or from-to chart), which typically shows the number of loaded trips that the devices must perform per unit time between the workstations. A from-to chart that would result from the parts flow in a facility actually is dictated by the transfer batch size; that is, the number of pa...

Semiconductor manufacturing is an important component of the U.S. manufacturing industry. Most of today’s fabrication facilities and those being designed for the near future use a bay layout configuration and an overhead monorail system for moving material between bays. These material handling systems are usually designed with a spine or perimeter type of configuration. This paper investigates ...