A Systemic approach for Material Handling System Design
Résumé
Mastering internal logistics is a crucial issue for numerous companies due to their impact on production costs and production system performances. The design of such systems is very complex, especially with the introduction of industry 4.0 technologies that bring new interactions with various technologies. Many questions arise on how to propose an efficient Material Handling System in which several Material Handling Equipment interact with each other in the demanding environment of production systems (operators, ERP, manufacturing system, etc.). This context of Material Handling Systems design implies considering a systemic approach to address its completion, nevertheless, this has not been the observed trend in the existing literature. Many practices in Material Handling System design and management can be found which are diversified and without a consensus on how to efficiently design these systems. In this paper, we propose a Material Handling System (MHS) design approach following the principles of Systems Engineering defined by The International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE). It starts with the needs and requirements identification through Model-based Systems Engineering techniques. Then based on the gathered data, a set of potential solutions is made. A method is then defined to drive the performance evaluation of the alternatives through partially-generated simulation models. Finally, a multi-criteria decision approach is provided to embed a wider range of decision parameters in the final selection round for the most suitable solution. The purpose is here to imply heterogeneous criteria coming from …