Performance analysis of closed-loop assembly lines with general processing times and finite buffer spaces

Abstract

This article analyzes flow lines with converging and diverging material flow, limited buffer sizes, generally distributed processing times, and a constant number of workpieces as a closed assembly or disassembly queueing network. A decomposition approach in which each subsystem is modeled as a G/G/1/K queueing system is used. The population constraint is enforced by requiring that the sum of the expected number of customers in the subsystems is equal to the total number of workpieces. The results of a simulation experiment indicate that the proposed approximation provides accurate results and that it performs better than other approaches.

Keywords:

• Closed-loop assembly lines
• closed queueing networks
• finite buffers
• blocking after service
• general processing times
• decomposition approach