Computer Design of Materials Handling Equipment

There are many materials handling machines in all fields of our life. The modern industrial and service processes with high performance requirement cannot be imagined without automated materials handling machines. Design of materials handling machines has secular history. While methods became more precious and technical possibilities significantly changed during the elapsed time, principles of the design tasks are still the same. There are many approved dimensioning methods for the modern materials handling equipment aided by computer software. At certain cases (for example: forklifts, etc.) the design process is simplified to a selection-application procedure, because manufacturers offer discrete, well defined types in wide range for all of the tasks from their predefined assortments. Huge materials handling systems (for example: overhead trolleys, etc.) can be built from module elements which are previously dimensioned in a production catalogue. If you have an individual task or you can take special environment into consideration, the international literature lists many alternatives to choose. In this paper I summarized the possibilities of the computer design of materials handling processes.