Material handling delivery in the presence of varying speed and interruptions

Increasing attention has been paid to workflow congestion due to traffic of material handling vehicles in a manufacturing facility. In this paper, we consider the problem of simulating traffic of material transfers in the presence of varying speed and interruptions. We capture congestion effects in the simulation model at a highly detailed level including acceleration/deceleration factors, intersections and pedestrian traffic flow. Simulation experiments are conducted to explore the impact of workflow congestion on material handling time. The results indicate that the highly detailed simulation model which considers congestion effects is able to estimate material handling time more accurately than the models that ignore congestion.