Allocating buffer storages in a flexible manufacturing system

This article reports an approximation scheme to determine buffer capacities required to achieve the target performance level in a general flexible manufacturing system with multiple products. This work extends a previous study of sequential production lines with a single product. The manufacturing system is operated using a pull mechanism, and the performance level is measured by the average proportion of demands backlogged. Simulation experiments were performed to study the validity of the approximation scheme under various situations.