An agent-based simulation of a JIT material handling system

Abstract

Material handling is a loose loop in most assembly plants. Just-in-time (JIT) is a management philosophy that strives to eliminate sources of manufacturing waste by producing the right part in the right place at the right time. We propose to apply JIT principles to material handling in assembly plants. Material Kanbans are introduced as an effective means to control and balance the physical material/part flow in the plant floor. An agent-based simulation prototype is implemented using Anylogic™. The flexibility of the agent-based approach, facilitates the simulation of various "what-if" scenarios including different layout designs, objective parameters and dynamic situations in the plant floor. © 2006 International Federation for Information Processing.