Modeling recirculating conveyors with blocking

Recirculating conveyors provide both a delivery mechanism and a buffer for queueing behavior. Although these systems are commonly found in flexible manufacturing systems and assembly systems, accurate analytical models for performance evaluation have not been available. We present a new analytical model for such systems that provides virtually the same information as obtained from simulation models. This model uses processing times and travel times having an exponential distribution and allows for blocking and recirculation of loads and can be extended to large conveying systems with multiple servers.