The interaction between the facility layout and the material handling system is widely recognized. The impact of these factors on the performance of a manufacturing system is also widely acknowledged. However, developing solution methodologies that simultaneously determine the facility layout and material handling system is a difficult task. This research investigates the integrated design problems in manufacturing systems, then proposes design procedures to solve the integrated design problems.;The integrated design in this research refines the distance measurements based on the type of material handling systems being used. It is different than most existing methodologies which either solve a material handling system design problem based on an existing layout, or solve a layout design problem using a loose distance approximation.;This research successfully solves the integrated layout and material handling system design problem. The proposed methodologies are illustrated through three specific application areas: flexible manufacturing system with an undirected flow path, flexible manufacturing system with a directed flow path and semiconductor fabrication facilities.;This research serves as an important step forward towards ideal goal of completely integrating the facility design problems in manufacturing systems.
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