Implementation and evaluation of an assistance software to support decision-making, design and simulation setup for automated guided vehicle systems

Autonomous guided vehicle systems (AGVS) offer huge potential for optimizing transportation tasks in manufacturing and warehouse logistics. Especially for small and medium enterprises, this potential is left untapped, as the selection of a proper solution requires substantial expertise. Support from external consultancies is often not requested. To address this issue, concepts for expert systems and multi-criteria decision algorithms have been discussed in academia for years but have not found any practical application yet. Therefore, in this paper we present an easy-to-use, holistic planning tool implemented with a user-centered development process, followed by the evaluation of the prototype. The results show its feasibility to realize a comprehensive planning process in such way, that users with little or no specific prior knowledge can perform initial steps for planning AGVS on their own. The user tests indicate good usability and acceptance for the prototype and show improvement potential for further development iterations.