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Uncrewed aerial vehicles, popularly called drones, offer a flexible and cost\u2010effective alternative. To explore the potential benefits and challenges of such systems, we used a version of the multi\u2010trip vehicle routing problem with time windows to model two realistic manufacturing environments as use cases. We provide the mixed integer linear programming formulation of this problem and compare results with those of a human\u2010only based system in a detailed simulated environment. Furthermore, as a physical proof\u2010of\u2010concept, we outfitted a commercially available drone with pick\u2010up and carry capabilities. We found that, even with limited drone carrying capacity, there are economic benefits realized from time savings, compared to ground\u2010based material handling systems. Besides these time savings, drones are sustainable as they operate on battery power and do not impair the air quality or the traffic experienced on the ground.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1111\/itor.13621","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,3]],"date-time":"2025-02-03T04:40:18Z","timestamp":1738557618000},"page":"3296-3315","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1002\/crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":4,"title":["Drone\u2010enabled material handling in smart manufacturing"],"prefix":"10.1111","volume":"32","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6234-6838","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Julio","family":"Jim\u00e9nez\u2010Sarda","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering Auburn University  Auburn Alabama USA"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-4776-4476","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Daniel F.","family":"Silva","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering Auburn University  Auburn Alabama USA"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-8808-0663","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Alice E.","family":"Smith","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering Auburn University  Auburn Alabama USA"}]}],"member":"311","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,3]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_2_7_2_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ejor.2006.02.019"},{"key":"e_1_2_7_3_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ejor.2009.06.034"},{"key":"e_1_2_7_4_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.3390\/s21041518"},{"key":"e_1_2_7_5_1","unstructured":"Business Wire. 2023.Gather AI becomes the largest autonomous inventory management platform in the world.Yahoo!finance. 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