INTELLIGENT CONTROL OF MATERIAL HANDLING SYSTEMS - Environmentally Conscious Materials Handling - page 63

to low-wage countries or is being replaced by more sophisticated alternatives
required by more demanding consumers.
Mass customization is the new concept for manufacturers, introduced by Stan
Davis (1989), that challenges the traditional neoclassical economical model of
customers as rational consumers who seeks to maximize their benefits and min-
imize their costs. The growth in communication technology, globalization, and
improved economy of consumers has shifted the decision-making power from
the producers and the governments to the customers.
This chapter will start with an introduction to a more decentralized approach
for controlling systems for manufacturing and material handling. Different
approaches for intelligent control will be discussed, and finally two cases
of material handling will be presented — one large-scale complex system of
baggage handling in an airport and the other a case of scheduling items through
a manufacturing process.

1 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

Beginning with the Industrial Age, high-volume, low-variety products were the
new trend among manufacturers, resulting in low-cost, high-quality products. To
begin with, customers were satisfied by the new opportunities realized by mass
production, even though customer requirements were not the driving force in
product design. Due to low competition in markets, manufacturers were more
concerned with production efficiency than customer requirements (Sipper and
Bulfin 1997). Likewise, dominating management theories of that time focused
on rationalization, such as Taylor's scientific management (Taylor 1911).
Improvements in automation technologies led manufactures to see the possibil-
ities of exchanging labor-intensive tasks with specialized machines and material
handling systems to rationalize production. The automotive industry was among
the first to take advantage of automation: Oldsmobile Motor introduced a station-
ary assembly line in 1907, followed by a moving assembly line in 1913 at Ford's
new factory in Highland Park, Michigan, even handling parts variety (Sipper and
Bulfin 1997).
For decades, mass production, automation, rationalization, and scientific
management were the dominating factors in manufacturing, but that gradually
changed towards the end of the twentieth century. Especially due to the growth
in international competition, market demands pushed forward new challenges
for manufacturing — flexibility and customization. Companies in Japan were the
first to address the new conditions; they changed from mass production to lean
production. Instead of focusing on having high volume and rationalization as
the key drivers in developing mass-production environments, lean production
focuses on the whole process of production — eliminating inventory, decreasing
costs, increasing flexibility, minimizing defects, and creating high product

variety.