This book provides readers with extensive information on path planning optimization for both single and multiple Autonomous Guided Vehicles (AGVs), and discusses practical issues involved in advanced industrial applications of AGVs. After discussing previously published research in the field and highlighting the current gaps, it introduces new models developed by the authors with the goal of reducing costs and increasing productivity and effectiveness in the manufacturing industry. The new models address the increasing complexity of manufacturing networks, due for example to the adoption of flexible manufacturing systems that involve automated material handling systems, robots, numerically controlled machine tools, and automated inspection stations, while also considering the uncertainty and stochastic nature of automated equipment such as AGVs. The book discusses and provides solutions to important issues concerning the use of AGVs in the manufacturing industry, including material flow optimization with AGVs, programming manufacturing systems equipped with AGVs, reliability models, the reliability of AGVs, routing under uncertainty, and risks involved in AGV-based transportation. The clear style and straightforward descriptions of problems and their solutions make the book an excellent resource for graduate students. Moreover, thanks to its practice-oriented approach, the novelty of the findings and the contemporary topic it reports on, the book offers new stimulus for researchers and practitioners in the broad field of production engineering.

This book provides extensive insights and analysis into pricing models for autonomous manufacturing. Taking a cost engineering approach, it shows how businesses facing technological change can provide visibility to pricing sensitivity and maximize price, and profit in every transaction. The book pulls together the many elements of cost engineering; cost estimation, cost control, business planning and management, profitability analysis, cost risk analysis and project management, planning, and scheduling, and considers the many different approaches and methods for estimating or assessing costs. It aims to help companies with decision making, cost management, and budgeting with respect to product development, and highlights the importance of cost estimation during the early stages of product development. A discussion of appropriate pricing models is also included to determine the most effective course for handling operational costs in autonomous manufacturing systems in order to create a more productive and profitable system. Cost Engineering and Pricing in Autonomous Manufacturing Systems will provide new insights for researchers and students, as well as industrial practitioners interested in applied models which can be employed and implemented in real cases.

Knowledge management is far-reaching. It can dramatically reduce costs such as costs of office work repetition, human resource retirement, information reuse, etc. Rather than "reinventing the wheel" and having it be a costly and inefficient activity, systematic reuse of knowledge can show substantial cost benefits immediately. This book shows how to develop process-oriented methodologies, covers both interorganizational and enterprises models, discusses how knowledge management can dramatically reduce costs and increase speed of response, presents a wide range of quantitative methods applied to various knowledge engineering problems, and offers several graphical presentations of models and processes. Academicians and practitioners in the area of knowledge management and engineering, especially managers in industries will fine this book useful. The material might also be useful in knowledge management graduate studies.

This book provides readers with extensive information on path planning optimization for both single and multiple Autonomous Guided Vehicles (AGVs), and discusses practical issues involved in advanced industrial applications of AGVs. After discussing previously published research in the field and highlighting the current gaps, it introduces new models developed by the authors with the goal of reducing costs and increasing productivity and effectiveness in the manufacturing industry. The new models address the increasing complexity of manufacturing networks, due for example to the adoption of flexible manufacturing systems that involve automated material handling systems, robots, numerically controlled machine tools, and automated inspection stations, while also considering the uncertainty and stochastic nature of automated equipment such as AGVs. The book discusses and provides solutions to important issues concerning the use of AGVs in the manufacturing industry, including material flow optimization with AGVs, programming manufacturing systems equipped with AGVs, reliability models, the reliability of AGVs, routing under uncertainty, and risks involved in AGV-based transportation. The clear style and straightforward descriptions of problems and their solutions make the book an excellent resource for graduate students. Moreover, thanks to its practice-oriented approach, the novelty of the findings and the contemporary topic it reports on, the book offers new stimulus for researchers and practitioners in the broad field of production engineering.