Design of a manufacturing hub with modular automation units

In nowadays transportation, manufacturing processes are completed during the transportation. Complementally manufacturing processes may be done inside of a manufacturing hub. This strategy may decrease total transportation and manufacturing costs. By increasing the number of hubs, total establishment cost will be growth too. It is assumed that each manufacturing hub contains some automation modules and the manufacturing hub capacity depends on its allocated modules. During different periods, demands may be changed so located hubs should increase their capacities by adding new modules while some modules of other hubs may be non-activated in some periods. In this paper movable automation modules are proposed to be transferred among hubs, so a mathematical model is presented to determine location of manufacturing hubs and their automation modules and finally optimal modules transferring scheme during different periods. The model performance is considered by some numerical examples.