Article ID: | iaor20082345 |
Country: | United Kingdom |
Volume: | 45 |
Issue: | 14 |
Start Page Number: | 3085 |
End Page Number: | 3111 |
Publication Date: | Jan 2007 |
Journal: | International Journal of Production Research |
Authors: | Gershwin Stanley B., Werner Loren M. |
Keywords: | scheduling, measurement |
We present an efficient and accurate approximate analytical decomposition method for evaluating the production rate and distribution of inventory of a closed-loop manufacturing system with unreliable machines and finite buffers. It is based on an earlier decomposition for a tandem line; it differs only in accounting for the different sets of machines that could cause blockage or starvation to other machines. The method can be applied to tandem production lines with a limited number of pallets or fixtures; the pallets travel in a closed loop even though the parts do not. It can also be applied to systems controlled by a CONWIP policy with infinite or finite buffers since such a policy can be implemented with a limited number of tokens that behave in the same way as pallets.