ICMESE: Intelligent consultant system for material handling equipment selection and evaluation

Abstract Material handling equipment selection, a key concern in material handling system design, is a complex, difficult task and requires extensive technical knowledge and systematic analysis. It is invaluable to justify the selected equipment model by performance evaluation before actual implementation. This paper presents an intelligent knowledge-based expert system called ICMESE for selection and evaluation of material handling equipment suitable for movement and storage of materials in a manufacturing facility. ICMESE consists of four modules: (1) a knowledge base to select an appropriate equipment type, (2) a multicriteria decision-making procedure to choose the most favorable commercial model of the selected equipment type, (3) a database to store the list of commercial models of equipment types with their specifications, and (4) simulators to evaluate the performance of the equipment model. The whole process of ICMESE is executed under an expert system environment.