Practical considerations in the optimisation of flow production systems

In this paper we consider the problems faced by an industrial planner who is responsible for the design of real-life asynchronous production lines under stochastic conditions that may be due to breakdown or random processing times. Based on real-life system data, it is shown that a number of available algorithms for the performance evaluation of a given system configuration as well as an algorithm for determining the optimum buffer configuration can be successfully applied in industrial practice.