Evaluation of routing strategies for decentralized self-organization in large scale conveyor systems

Decentralized self-organization of dynamic activities in the field of materials handling raises another level of complexity in the material flow control mechanismus. It is essential to provide a systematic approach to those new control mechanismus by means of modeling and deduction. We present an approach for modeling the routing problem in material flow networks with a graph based model. Moreover the elementary algorithm of Dijkstra are applicable to various problems in decentralized routing. Additionally, the graph mode is integrated into a material flow simulation suite. This enables the direct comparison between classical centralized material flow control and the decentralized multiagent-based control.