Smart Logistics Junction to Supervise the Material Handling Equipment Movements at the Intersection

This paper presents a work undertaken to simulate the logistics processes in the digital environment using a discrete event simulation software which involves the movements of the Material Handling Equipment [MHE]. MHE movements to the line side involves traffic, where the parts are transported from the supermarket area to the line side based on the part requirement list ordered from the line side. The intersections are the bottleneck in the system due to the traffic and if the vehicle scheduling is not streamlined, then during any failure/stoppage of the vehicle, would result in the blocking of the preceding vehicles causing line stoppage. This work outlines to develop a junction block in the digital environment using a discrete event driven approach where an optimal flow of the vehicles is maintained at the intersections. The Junction block is created based on the succeeding track occupancy level, thus the preceding MHE’s can overtake in case of any blockages based on the priority. The junction block dynamically updates the reorder point based on the delays due to traffic flow at the intersections and captures the traffic intensity level. This customized logic development of the junction block can be used across any simulation models as a library which involves the traffic flow thus optimizing the vehicle scheduling at the intersection of the routes which results in a significant reduction of modelling effort of the logics at the intersection.