Knowledge-based Methods for Efficient Material Handling Equipment Development

This paper focuses on the Knowledge-based engineering (KBE) method and general Knowledge-based technologies for automated design of material handling products. As in vehicle and aerospace engineering this is a widespread technology, the authors try to introduce the main benefits of KBE for the material handling equipment design. The benefits of KBE, as faster and more accurate (safer) product development, customized products and knowledge of employees captured within a knowledge management system, let KBE hold many promising possibilities within, to deal with nowadays demands on engineering development, driven by cost reductions and time shortcuttings.
The authors introduce the actual stage of KBE and its methodologies within engineering development complemented by some critical remarks. There will be shown three different examples of realized KBE projects for material handling equipment, focusing on different levels of automated system design. There's the fully automated design of wire rope drums, driven only by some few input parameters specified in a graphical user interface (GUI). Furthermore the automated basic assembly layout for drive components of an AS/RS is shown. The automated layouting and basic design work for shelves and AS/RS within a complete storage systems by a GUI driven input procedure shows the advantages of KBE, for here e.g. in a very fast basic layout design for early stage cost estimation.
The authors will give an outlook of forthcoming work and present ideas to develop an appropriate methodology or working environment for the use of knowledge technologies in material handling design. They focus on the necessary steps and sources to provide, capture and use engineering knowledge and will introduce ideas for software tools to support the use of captured knowledge in automated material handling design.