Simulation-optimization for transportation in a unified automated material handling systems

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1162708.1163168International audienceThis paper focuses on the analysis of transport strategies in Automated Material Handling Systems (AMHS) for the semiconductor industry. A difference against previous work is that our approach takes into account the unified nature of inter-bay and intra-bay load transport operations. In a unified AMHS, vehicles can travel along the whole network path to deliver loads directly from one machine to another without passing by intermediate storage. In order to optimally satisfy transport requests during the production horizon, intelligent strategies have to be implemented. The problem is addressed by means of a hybrid simulation-optimization approach. A detailed simulation model of the semiconductor factory is built in order to analyze factory dynamics. Mathematical programming is used to determine the optimal value of the parameters of the simulation model. The detailed simulation model carried out for this research work showed some interesting and unpredictable evidences