Approximate analysis of serial manufacturing lines with buffer control

In manufacturing applications, the goals of maximizing the system throughput and minimizing the mean manufacturing interval often conflict with each other. Consequently, a trade-off has to be struck between these two goals. This trade-off is typically achieved by imposing suitable control on the manufacturing line. A simple but effective means to achieve a reasonable manufacturing interval at little expense of the throughput is to impose suitable buffer size limits on the work-stations in the line and block the input to a work-station whenever it is full. This paper describes one such buffer control scheme and presents an algorithm that can be used for approximately analyzing the performance of this scheme in the context of serial manufacturing lines.