Mohammad Modarres - Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
Ardavan Asef-Vaziri - California State University, Northridge, California, USA

We consider the problem of fleet sizing of unit load automated material handling vehicles (AMHV) on a circular unidirectional flow path. It is assumed the circular flow path as well as the pickup and drop off station locations are already optimally designed by applying the existing methods. We develop an analytical model to estimate the fleet size of the vehicles when the jobs arrival is stochastic. The objective is to achieve the expected waiting time goals by selecting the appropriate size of AMHVs fleet. The dispatching policy of first encounter first served (FEFS) is adopted.

AMHV, AGV, Facility planning, Stochastic models, FEFS