This work is focused on development of two course modules using simulation and multimedia for imparting knowledge on material handling to engineering and management students at the undergraduate level. 

The first module has been developed to teach students the important role of material handling cost in choosing a type of factory layout, i.e. Product, Jobshop or Group Technology-based layout for a certain set of products. It provides a framework for experimentation among the different layout types for a defined set of products. Through the use of the module, students can understand and appreciate material handling costs that may be incurred by choosing each type of layout. The module uses a commercial discrete-event simulation program and a multimedia-authoring tool. 

The second module has been developed using multimedia software for introducing material handling to engineering and management students. It is a question-driven module; while answering the questions, the user would be able to go to the knowledge base and learn more about material handling. Approximately 85 images and 25 minutes of video have been used in building the module. 

 The scope of material handling is expanding and its importance is becoming more widely recognized since handling activity in a typical enterprise may easily account for 50 - 75 % of the production activity. Although materials handling does not add value to the product, it usually adds a significant element of cost to it and though many managers in the industry realize that the costs of material handling are high, they think that these costs are inevitable and cannot be easily avoided. While most engineering programs provide instruction in manufacturing processes, the teaching of material handling is usually not emphasized. It is important that a proper emphasis be laid on teaching the young engineers and managers all about material handling in the undergraduate curriculum.

The job market of the future is likely to be characterized by an increasing demand for skills that are poorly taught or not at all taught in lecture-based courses. Students are unlikely to find satisfying employment without effective communication, cooperation, and leadership skills, none of which is fostered in the traditional learning environment. Research suggests that learning can be greatly facilitated using cooperative and interactive techniques. Class room based instruction about material handling equipment is helpful to some extent but it does not convey as much information as is possible through instructional laboratories which is somewhat impossible due to a large variety of material handling equipment.  

Allowing students to experience the practical and realistic situations of their profession has to be the thrust of the curriculum in engineering. The design process is iterative, the analyzer has to go back and forth between the different steps of defining, developing, analyzing, testing, and evaluation until a satisfactory design is obtained. Design is also a creative process of devising a product or a system to meet the ultimate goal of satisfying the customer needs (Steudel, [1993]). To aid the process of designing, the student has to be provided with enough tools in the form of fundamental concepts, which can be embedded into their minds by using the experiential learning approach. Experiential learning is a pedagogical approach that offers students an opportunity to link classroom theory with practical applications. People learn by many different means, but prefer to gain knowledge and skills through experiential opportunities (Richardson, [1994]). 

Learning tools that are interactive are a cost effective way of giving several different experiences to a student. Simulation is the art and science of creating a representation of a process or system for the purpose of experimentation and evaluation (Gogg, Mott, [1994]). It is a powerful analytical tool that can significantly facilitate the problem solving process. The capability of the simulation environment to allow the user to experiment by changing the different parameters is unique, and in the process helps the user discover what additional information is needed to solve the problem. With the increased power of the personal computers and software, simulation - the interactive teaching tool - has a much wider scope in the engineering curriculum. 

Described in the sections ahead is a tool, LAYSIM, to impart to the students the impact of choosing a type of layout i.e. Product, Jobshop or Group Technology-based layout for a certain set of products on material handling cost. The simulation tool developed is meant to be used in introducing the topic of Facilities Design in an engineering or management curriculum. The module is intended to give the students a first-hand experience in understanding the relationship between the type of layout, number of components being manufactured in the factory and the resulting material handling costs. 

Though computer-based instruction has been in use for a long time, the possibilities of conveying information through multimedia instruction are broader because of the ease of incorporating video, sound, and images along with text and these features of multimedia instruction can be ideally utilized for teaching material handling. The basic concept of multimedia-based interactive learning is that the students can learn using their own typical learning style. Interactive computer-based learning (if well-implemented) enables students to learn via the route that interests them the most i.e. the students can learn at a pace which is comfortable for them and this ensures maximum grasping of the conveyed information. A multimedia interactive learning system is not a linear series of screens or video images but instead is a multidimensional labyrinth to be explored in whatever sequence the student desires. Students can pause on material that they perceive to be difficult and skip over text they understand. They can explore in more depth the parts of the course they find interesting (Davis, Elder, [1993]).  

There has been an ongoing debate on the effectiveness of learning via video. Some feel that the video image is complex and elicits a passive response from the viewer, unless it is interactive and draws the viewer into the image, while others think that the response to video is not at all passive. The heart slows as the brain draws blood as we orient to the image; skin conductivity increases, alpha waves are suppressed - the response to image is very different from text (Brown, [1995]). Video imagery suits the descriptive task very well with no mediation at all, however if the learner is asked to analyze what he has learnt then the video advantage over the text disappears completely. 

 With the advent of the personal computer and its easy availability it is now possible to use it as an interactive teaching medium. Over the years a number of tools have been developed to aid the interactive teaching methodology, two of these, Simulation and Multimedia, have been discussed here. 

Simulation is a very effective and inexpensive tool for bringing in practical situations into the class room atmosphere with a provision to apply and see the results of a set of possible solutions, one of which may ultimately be chosen to be the best. 

Simulation has been a major tool for military training. Combat engagement simulations allow human warfighters and their simulated weapon systems to engage other warfighters on a virtual battlefield. These simulations are becoming increasingly realistic because of the continuing advances in computer and communication technologies (Bell, Crane, [1993]). The effort to cut costs throughout the military has increased the importance of simulated training systems (Mertens, [1993]). 

Computer simulation has been used in the industry for upgrading the knowledge level of professional engineers. The use of simulation methods and technology to build models of manufacturing systems enables Ford Motor Company and its facilities and tooling vendors to work together towards common goals of high system productivity and quality coupled with early avoidance and correction of potential problems (Williams, [1993]). 

In the apparel cut and sew sector of the textile industry, old batch manufacturing process characterized by high work in process and piece rate pay (progressive bundle systems), are being replaced with low inventory cellular manufacturing and "Team Sewing" group incentives. To be successful in this dramatic cultural change, a manufacturer must invest and commit to tremendous educational efforts fostering trust and team building, training cross functional sewing machine operators, and most critically, developing line balancing skills in production supervisors and operators who perhaps never had to consider such decisions before. The basic line balancing strategy for a team is to effectively move operators from task to task to manage bottlenecks and to smooth the workflow. The line balancing decision trainer is an interactive simulation based software tool designed to improve the line balancing skills by leading students/users through a series of lessons and practice sessions (Mazzotti, Armstrong, Powell, [1993]). 

Simulation is also being used in the universities for teaching young engineers the practical solutions to be faced in the industry. Two graduate students with the help of the faculty advisor at the "Rochester Institute of Technology" have designed and developed a simulated AGV system as a learning tool. The system provides a hands-on learning environment which physically demonstrates the hardware and the software concepts associated with an AGV material handling system (Lwin, [1994]). 

Multimedia in the context of interactive instructional technology refers to student stations that house computer software programs for control of the display of motion video, still images, and sound from a video disc and or video tape player, a CD-ROM, drive or other digital storage devices (Jones, Smith, [1992]). 

Multimedia instruction technology is being developed in a large number of universities to teach a variety of subjects. Here we mention some of the modules which have been developed.

I. The module "Multimedia Software for Teaching Discrete Event Simulation", is used to give a simple introduction to simulation and with help of multimedia the traditional 20 lecture course with supporting laboratory has been reduced to five lectures (Davis, Elder, [1993]).

II. At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York, all 800 engineering freshmen now take a redesigned core course in physics and mechanics. The course has been completely revamped in the last few years to take advantage of the boom in multimedia computer technology, which features the marriage of video, text, graphics, and sound. Every student who takes the class has access to a computer workstation in the classroom. Students in this physics/mechanics course have access to an array of computer tools. For example, when studying vibration, they can view on video the dramatic collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Through the multimedia technology, students are able to stop the video and study the bridge's oscillations with a graphics program. Students can then take data from those graphics programs and construct their own models of oscillating masses and compare those to the bridge's oscillations (Burroughs, [1995]).

III. In their paper "Can Multimedia Instruction Meet our Expectations", Jones, L. L. and Smith, S.G. talk about their experience of developing and using multimedia for teaching introductory chemistry over the past seven years. The lessons are used to replace up to half of the laboratory time in the two-semester sequence. These lessons are also distributed to other schools both as a stand-alone package and as part of a comprehensive curriculum. Students get more opportunities to practice decision making than are normally possible in the laboratory. They are allowed to make mistakes, but not to proliferate and reinforce them. These features have resulted in a learning environment that challenges students to do their best and enhances learning beyond what is possible in a laboratory setting. The curriculum has also been enhanced through the inclusion of chemical reactions that involve toxic substances or that are too violent to be included in a laboratory course (Jones, Smith, [1992]). 

 LAYSIM has been developed as a means of providing the students an environment for experimentation with different layout options. It presents the students with three different types of plant layouts: 1) Product Layout, 2) Group Technology-based Layout, 3) Jobshop Layout and a common set of products. LAYSIM incorporates eight layouts as shown in the Table 1. The students have an opportunity to compute the material handling costs with each type of layout for different levels of production volume and different number of products (This is explained in more detail in the next section). 

Table 1. Layouts used in LAYSIM

LAYSIM will enable students to perform the following experiential exercise. They would be able to change certain parameters and perform a number of simulation runs to collect enough data based on which they would be able to construct the P - Q Chart,  

Figure 1. P-Q Chart

where P represents the number of products being manufactured in the factory and Q represents the volume of production. For example, one simulation run will be performed for each of the layout types for 2 components with "large" production volumes. The simulation runs would provide the material handling cost in each case; the layout type with the least material handling cost will be the "preferred layout". A typical P - Q Chart is shown in Figure 1. This above exercise will enable the students to understand and appreciate the material handling costs associated with each type of layout. The layouts and the number of components chosen has been designed in such a way that after going through the exercise the student is able to come up with results which support some of the theory behind the P - Q Chart.

 A set of compressor components have been chosen for manufacturing in the example factory. These components are listed in Table 2 along with their routing and process times.

The departments required for manufacturing the components and the areas per machine are shown in Table 3.

Three different choices are possible for moving material. Table 4 provides data for selection of appropriate material handling method. 

The floorplan of the factories used for building the simulation model have been built using FactoryCAD which runs on a AutoCAD software platform and provides additional features for developing floorplans. The floorplan includes the boundary walls for the factory, office, break rooms and also the workcenter/machine boundaries as laid out on the floor of the factory. These boundaries are then used as a reference to place the icons of

Table 2. Components To Be Manufactured

Table 3. Machines and Their Area Requirements

TABLE 4 - Material Handling Alternatives

the various machines in ProModel. The layout drawing developed using FactoryCAD is saved as a Windows Metafile and then imported into ProModel. A sample of the layout imported into ProModel is shown in Figure 2.

 Figure 2. An Example Floorplan in FactoryCAD

ProModel 3.0 was chosen as the simulation software for LAYSIM. ProModel 3.0 is a PC based software which runs under the Windows environment This software was chosen because of the following capabilities.

• a run-time model can be made for distributing the module for feedback and dissemination;
• animation of the material handling equipment, material and personnel is possible;
• appropriate icons for production environment such as machines, material handling equipment etc. are built into the software;
• importing of AutoCAD drawings into the layout background is possible;
• shifts can be defined and assigned, and down-time for machines can be specified;
• global variables can be defined: this is used to compute the material handling cost during simulation;
• subroutines can be built : this has been used to make the models interactive; and
• a number of views of different parts of the plant can be defined for the factory layout and can be presented to the user in a defined sequence during the simulation run, or can be used by the user in a random manner; 

The first step in developing the simulation models is to import the FactoryCAD layout into ProModel, the procedure for doing this has already been described earlier. The next step is to introduce machine icons in the space allocated for in the layout, this is specifying of the locations, beyond that entities, resources, path networks, and processing sequence are specified for running the model. Salient features of the module are described below. 

It is possible to define regular shift hours and shift breaks for the full week and save it as a separate file. A number of such shift times can be defined and stored in separate files. These files can then be assigned to the various locations and resources in the simulation model. For the models developed for LAYSIM three different shift files have been created and assigned to different locations and resources.

By defining the distance traveled by the material handling resources and the material handling cost as "global variables" and incrementing their value the material handling cost is dynamically presented on the simulation screen. A few parameters such as the batch size of the components being processed are variable and the user will have an opportunity to specify the value before the simulation run.

The run time model has been made for distributing the tool to get feedback about its effectiveness. The run time model can be used on any personal computer without having the need to buy the simulation software. ProModel 3 has a provision to create a model package which can then be distributed to the users’; the model package consists of the models and ProModel which has to be installed at the users’ site before the packaged model can be run. The user, however, cannot modify the model or develop other models. 

The user is able to see the movement of the material through the various stages of production in the simulated factory. The material is moved from the stores to the first stage of production and from there to the various departments/machines before it is finally

Figure 3. Simulated Environment in ProModel 

routed to the final inspection and then dispatched. A number of different icons are used to identify the components in various stages of production, material handling icons are used to simulate the movement of material between the departments. There is also an indicator for machines in use. All this gives the students a better understanding of the material handling occurring with each type of layout. A sample screen for a model in ProModel shown in Figure 3.On the simulation screen several different views have been defined. A few of these get activated from within the model during the simulation run to highlight the various regions of the factory and present a better view to the user, a list of these views also appears on the simulation screen with information on accessing these via the keyboard during the simulation. 

Multimedia ToolBook 3.0 was chosen as a driver software for LAYSIM. It is possible to run any Windows based software from within Multimedia ToolBook 3.0 and ToolBook can help in building aesthetic screens with buttons for navigating through the module. A sample of the driver screens used in the module are presented in Figures 4 and 5.

Figure 4. LAYSIM Main Screen

Figure 5.- LAYSIM Simulation Environment

Packaging of Tool 

Two 1.44 Mb disks and a set of ProModel disks (4 nos.) form a package. The two disks have all the model files for the eight models and the .glib file along with the runtime version of the driver program which is written in ToolBook 3.0. ProModel software has to be loaded by the user before LAYSIM can be installed. The installation of LAYSIM is done like any other windows software.  

The hardware required for developing a multimedia module may include the following equipment:

• PC with a Pentium 100 MHz or better processor, a CD-ROM drive, speakers, at least 16 megabytes of RAM, at least 1 GB hard drive, 16-bit sound card;
• A scanner to scan the images into hard drive;
• a VCR;

Equipment to convert video tape into digital files;

• A CD writer;

The following is a table of equipment which was available to develop the module: 

Table 8. List Of Hardware

Here is a brief description of the equipment which was used for developing the module:

Personal Computer: A Pentium 90 MHz computer with 1 gigabit hard drive and 32 megabytes of memory, 17" monitor at a resolution of 1024x786 (large fonts)

Scanner: A Hewlett Packard Scanjet 3C was used to scan the images and store them as .gif files on to the hard drive.

VCR: The VCR was used to view the various tapes on material handling and create relevant clips and store the clips on to a separate video tape.

Video Equipment: To convert the video clips available on the tapes into digital files which can be viewed on the computer.

CD Writer: The video files and the image files which were scanned and stored onto the hard drive were put together on a compact disc using the CD Writer. This way all the data files for the module are available on one CD which can be easily duplicated and distributed to the users.  

The software required for developing a multimedia module may include the following:

• Multimedia software;
• Scanning and image processing software;
• Software for running video;

The following software were used to develop the module:

Table 9. List Of Software

MultiMedia ToolBook 3.0 : This software was used to build the module. ToolBook is an interactive environment for both creating and running applications. To define how elements in an application behave, OpenScript the ToolBook’s programming language is used. ToolBook uses the metaphor of a book as the basis of the application. Like a printed book , a book in ToolBook is divided into pages, which represent the applications screens. Pages contain fields, buttons, and graphics; pages and the items on them are called objects in ToolBook. Each page can have different objects, or objects can be shared among pages by placing them on a background, which can be common to several pages

DeskScan: This software comes with the scanner. It was used to scan the selected images into the hard drive. The following options are available for scanning the images:

In addition, the screen resolution can be set to the required DPI.

LviewPro: This freeware software is an image editing software. It was used to modify and save the files in gif format. It is a Windows-based software and has a wide range of capabilities. It can be used to save the image files in different formats, delete unwanted objects from the background, fill color in the background, resize the image, change the screen resolution (dpi) of the image, sharpen the image, etc.

Tapes : Eight video tapes with information on material handling were reviewed to gather relevant information for the module. The videos had been collected from different sources following are the title and the source of the videos.

After going through these tapes a number of clips were identified to be highly useful. These were then recorded onto a separate video tape. The clips collected totaled a length of approximately 30 minutes. The next step was to review the tape with the clips and make a list of clips with the start and end time, the soundtrack was a major factor in deciding the start and end times. The words spoken by the commentator at the beginning and end of each clip were noted down for reference. With this data the video tape and a blank CD-ROM were sent to a facility in the multimedia laboratory at Virginia Tech for converting the video on tape into clip files on CD. At this stage the 30 minutes of video was converted into 12 clip files in .avi format and were stored on a CD-ROM. The 12 files occupied 300 megabytes of space. The CD-ROM used had a capacity to hold 650 Megabytes of information.

Stills : Eighty still images have been scanned and are available in the data base. The images cover almost the entire range of material handling equipment used in the industry. The images were selected to cover the entire range. These images have been taken from product brochures, text books, magazines, and Material Handling Institute's literature. Both black and white and color images have been used in the data base; even line diagrams have been selected, the only criterion for the selection was the information conveyed by the image. The images were scanned into the hard drive using the DeskScan software. All the images were scanned at 75 dpi resolution to keep the size of the files small and manageable. The color images were scanned with millions of colors setting and the black and white images in 2 grays. The DeskScan software could save the images in compressed .tif format, this way the size of the saved image file was the least. Next LviewPro software was used to save the file in .gif format which further reduced the size of the image files, this software was also used to resize the images. Since all the pictures scanned had different sizes and the stage to be used for displaying the image in ToolBook was to be of a constant size, the images had to be resized to fit the stage size. In some of the images certain unwanted objects in the background had to be removed, this was done using the LviewPro software. 

Software : The module developed is called "mmCoach for Material Handling". The module is intended to give an introduction about material handling to freshman and sophomore level engineering and management undergraduate students. The module is question-driven, a feature which has been described in detail later on in this paper. Approximately 25 minutes of video clips and 80 still images have been used in building the module. Text has been used to describe the images and the video clips. The knowledge base has been categorized as shown in Table 10.

Organization : The module is made up of 92 pages on 6 Backgrounds. The first page is the opening Screen and is the Main Menu, it has buttons to navigate to the following Screens: Overview screen, Question screen, Tracking Scores screen and a button to quit the application. Shown in Figure 6 is the main screen. The Overview Screen has information about the module. It highlights to the user the various features of the module and has instructions for the proper utilization of the module resources. Shown here in Figure 7 is the Overview screen.The third Screen is the Question Screen. It has buttons to navigate to main menu, knowledge base and score tracking. The question screen has fields for displaying the question and five probable answers. There are 5 buttons with captions available to the user to choose the correct answer and a field which shows the correct answer after a response has been registered. Figure 8 shows the Question screen. 

Table 10. Categories Of Knowledge Base

Figure 6. Main Screen

Figure 7. Overview Screen

Figure 8. Question Screen 

The fourth screen is the tracking score screen and has fields which show the current score for each category of question. The screen is shown in Figure 9. 

From fifth screen onwards are the knowledge menu screens. These screens have stages to show the still images and run the video and also there are scrolling text boxes under each stage which has information on the image or video exhibited in that stage. Every knowledge base screen has at least one stage for displaying image of material handling equipment and some screens have two stages for still images and one stage for video which is also the maximum number on any screen and there are also screens with other combinations such as one still stage and one video stage or two still stages. The knowledge base screen has buttons to navigate to main menu, knowledge base index and question screen. Shown in Figure 10 is a typical knowledge base screen.

Figure 9. Scores Screen 

Question Feature : The module is question driven. Any user intending to use the module has to answer the questions and while answering these questions if the user needs some information then he/she can go to the knowledge base menu and browse through the images and video and text. The access to the knowledge base is only through the Question screen. The Question screen has text field for the question and probable answers and buttons for selection of the right answers and a text field to show the right answer after a response has been made and the score has been adjusted. After a response has been made to a particular question, the user can not answer that question again in that session.

Figure 10. Knowledge Base Screen 

Unlike the knowledge base menu there is only one Question Screen and all the questions, the probable answers, the captions of buttons for choosing the right answer, and the right answer are stored in the Windows Excel spreadsheet. Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) has been used to achieve this. The advantage of this system is that the spreadsheet can be easily modified by any instructor to suit his/her needs, the ToolBook script need not be touched at all. 

The module has been packaged for ease of distribution. Two 1.44 Mb disks and a CD ROM form the part of the package. The two disks have the runtime version of the module developed in MultiMedia ToolBook 3.0 and the CD ROM has all the image and video files.

The packaging is done by using the Setup Manager which is available as a part of the ToolBook 3.0 software. All the run time files required for ToolBook plus the application file and the spreadsheet file were selected to be included in the package. An icon was assigned to the module which shows up within the program group under program manager. A default directory was specified where all the application, runtime and data base files would be stored. All this information was then compressed and written onto two 1.44Mb disks for distribution. The module loads like any other Windows software, by using the A:\setup command from the Program Manager.

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