Over the past thirty years, the practice of engineering design has been transformed by information technology. Rapid advances in computer hardware and software have enabled the development of computational tools to support design decision making, especially tools integrating representation, analysis, synthesis, and collaboration. The tremendous success of engineering design has not yet been realized in the domain of industrial facility design, however. Many aspects of industrial facilities (e.g., factories and warehouses) are well studied and well understood. For example, there are good theoretical models for sizing storage systems and slotting products, for specifying the number of vehicles required to provide material transport, and for sequencing automated storage/retrieval operations. Yet experts who design industrial facilities rarely use these kinds of models; if at all, the models are used very late in the design process, to "fine tune" the detailed design. Moreover, industrial logistics systems design is becoming much more complex, with globalization and e-commerce the principal drivers.

The proposed research addresses this apparent disconnect between the practice of industrial logistics system design and the extant research on analysis and synthesis in industrial logistics systems. We will seek first to understand industrial logistics system design as practiced by experts, and then to propose a conceptual framework for industrial logistics system design, and finally to explore specific key elements of a computational platform for industrial logistics system design. The research will be conducted in collaboration with expert industrial logistics systems designers. These experts will be studied as they design industrial facilities, in order to identify the types of data, information and knowledge they use, the criteria they apply and the reasoning they use in making design trade-offs. From these observations, a conceptual framework for industrial logistics systems design will be proposed. In collaboration with the expert designers, the research team will then identify and prototype or mock-up a set of key design tools, and suggest the structure and functionality of an engineering design system for industrial logistics systems.

The creation of powerful engineering design tools for industrial logistics systems requires careful articulation of the real needs of designers and of the computational tools of greatest value. The proposed research is a first attempt to meet that need.

Project staff have conducted a case study involving re-design of an apparel warehouse. Expert designers were studied in terms of their decision-making processes. This material has been compiled into lecture material available for use in an undergraduate course on facility design. Please contact Doug Bodner to receive further information.

Contact: doug.bodner@isye.gatech.edu