Estimating the throughput of a cyclic assembly system

The paper considers a production system consisting of several fabrication lines feeding an assembly station. The machines in the fabrication lines and at assembly are assumed to have general processing time distributions. Releases to the system are governed by the CONWIP protocol. The paper models this system as an assembly-like queue and develops approximations for the throughput of the system. Comparisons with simulations show that this approximation is robust over a wide range of conditions. Finally, the paper observes that throughput tends to be higher when machines with higher mean processing times and/or higher variances are in fabrication rather than assembly.