Designing and Planning of Material Handling Systems for Mass Customization

Mass customization (MC) involves the challenge of high product proliferation and frequent production volumes change. Flexible manufacturing has been treated as the main solution for these challenges. However, without a flexible material handling system (MHS), flexible manufacturing cannot be implemented successfully. Therefore, the designing and planning of the flexible MHS has attracted intensive research. This chapter first reviews different types of MHS in MC. In order to evaluate the performance of MHS, qualitative and quantitative measures are proposed. Then a detailed designing and planning of a flexible MHS using free-ranging automated guided vehicle (AGV) with an indoor local positioning system (LPS) is illustrated. As a case study, the layout of the proposed flexible MHS in the apparel industry is designed. Then to assess the effectiveness of the proposed flexible MHS, Monte Carlo simulation and analytical models are formulated to compare its operational performance with that of the fixed-track systems commonly used in the apparel industry. Economic feasibility analysis is also included. Based on our analysis, the proposed flexible MHS has potential advantages over the fixed-track system in an MC environment.