An intelligent consultant for material handling euqipment selection and evaluation

The material handling equipment selection, that is a key task in the material handling system design, is a complex, difficult task, and requires a massive technical knowledge and systematic analysis. It is invaluable to justify the selected equipment model by the performance evaluation before its actual implementation. This paper presents an intelligent knowledge-based expert system called "IMESE" created by authors, for the selection and evaluation of material handling equipment model suitable for movement and storage of materials in a manufacturing facility. The IMESE is consisted of four modules: a knowledge base to select an appropriate equipment type, a multiple criteria decision making procedure to choose the most favorable commercial model of the selected equipment type, a database to store the list of commercial models of equipment types with their specifications, and simulators to evaluate the performance of the equipment model. The whole process of IMESE is executed under VP-Expert expert system environment.vironment.