Characterization of Performance, Robustness, and Behavior Relationships in a Directly Connected Material Handling System

In the design of material handling systems with complex and unpredictable dynamics, conventional search and optimization approaches that are based only on performance measures offer little guarantee of robustness. Using evidence from research into complex systems, the use of behavior-based optimization is proposed, which takes advantage of observed relationships between complexity and optimality with respect to both performance and robustness. Based on theoretical complexity measures, particularly algorithmic complexity, several simple complexity measures are created. The relationships between these measures and both performance and robustness are examined, using a model of a directly connected material handling system as a backdrop. The fundamental causes of the relationships and their applicability in the proposed behavior-based optimization approach are discussed.