DYNAMIC MATERIAL HANDLING FOR A CLASS OF FLEXIBLE MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS.

A real-time hierarchical routing control scheme for a large class of material handling systems is presented. The higher level (coordinator) performs resource allocation tasks and supplies parameter values to the lower (local control) level. The lower level operates in an autonomous (without continuous supervision) and distributed fashion. If state information is made available to the coordinator, the routing strategy can furthermore be adaptively adjusted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]