Effect of cognitive automation in a material handling system on manufacturing flexibility

The case of a truck-body production line of a truck company was investigated by applying modified DYNAMO++ for the material handling system. Then, a simulation program, AnyLogic 6.9.0 was used to investigate the effect of the cognitive and mechanical automation in the material handling system on manufacturing flexibility. The research results showed that the levels of cognitive and mechanical automation of the material handling system were increased by 52.4% and 48.0%, respectively, which resulted in improving manufacturing flexibility by 14.2% in cycle time, 53.3% in downtime, and 26.3% in the number of tasks. Cognitive automation, in particular, contributed total improvements in cycle time and downtime of 64.2% and 74.1%, respectively, which showed that cognitive automation has a very critical effect on manufacturing flexibility in the material handling system.