Material handling process on assembly lines is important because poor planning and control policies lead to low utilization of workforce and resources, which will cause more inadequate part delivery (part starvation) and reduce the overall system performance. Therefore, the delivery system must be optimized such that minimum number of workforce can be achieved without sacrificing production rate. In real assembly process, for better safety and higher efficiency, dolly trains are widely used to replace traditional forklifts for part delivery, which allows drivers to deliver more than one parts per trip and raises problems: how to choose proper number of parts and the delivery order at the beginning of each trip to achieve optimal dispatching control. Effective algorithms and strategies are addressed and compared in this study to provide practical guidelines for dolly material handling system.
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