Mathes: An expert system for material handling equipment selection

Abstract This paper describes a rule-based expert system, MATHES (MATerial Handling Equipment Selection), that selects appropriate types of material handling equipment for intra-factory moves of unitized material. The equipment types are chosen by applying heuristic selection rules (acquired from a human expert) to responses from a user concerning relevant details about the characteristics of a material move. The heuristic rules relate characteristics of the move to appropriate types of material handling equipment. Associated with each selected equipment type is a factor that can be used to order the list of selected equipment as to each type's degree of appropriateness.