A Decomposition Method For The Approximate Evaluation Of Capacitated Transfer Lines With Unreliable Machines And Random Processing Times

Abstract

This paper presents a decomposition method to evaluate the performance measures of a capacitated transfer line with unreliable machines and random processing times. The decomposition is based on approximating the k - 1-buffer system by k - 1 single-buffer systems. Numerical examples indicate that the approach is accurate as long as the probability that a machine is starved and blocked at the same time is small.