An expert system for material handling equipment selection

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Abstract

Manufacturing Systems are subject to increasingly frequent changes in demand in
terms of number and type of products they produce. It is impractical to continually reconfigure
the facilities, but it is possible to modify the material handling arrangements
so that the selected equipment is the most appropriate for the current requirements.
The number of decisions that need to be made coupled with the rate at which decisions
must be taken adds significant difficulty to the problem of equipment selection.
Furthermore there are relatively few experts who have the necessary range of
knowledge coupled with the ability to use this knowledge to select the most
appropriate material handling solution in any situation. Access to such experts is
therefore greatly restricted and decisions are more commonly made by less experienced
people, who depend on equipment vendors for information, often resulting in poor
equipment selection.
This research first examines the significance of appropriate material handling
equipment choice in dynamic environments. The objective is to construct a computer
based expert system utilising knowledge from the best available sources in addition to
a systematic procedure for selection of material handling equipment. A new system has
been produced, based on the Flex language, which elicits from the inexperienced user
details of the handling requirements in order to build an equipment specification. It
then selects from among 11 handling solution groups and provides the user with
information supporting the selection.
Original features of the system are the way in which the knowledge is grouped, the
ability of the procedure to deal with quantifiable and non-quantifiable equipment and
selection factors, selection of decision analysis method and the validation of the final
choice to establish confidence in the results. The system has been tested using real
industrial data and has been found in 81% of cases to produce results which are
acceptable to the experts who provided the information.

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