THROUGHPUT ANALYSIS USING ALTERNATING RENEWAL PROCESS IN BALANCED SERIAL PRODUCTION LINES WITH NO INTERSTAGE BUFFERS

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a closed form method with exponential function to calculate performance measures, such as expected value and variance of the transient throughput, and the probability that measures the delivery in time for a balanced serial production with no interstage buffers. Such approach is based on the assumptions that 1) each machine alternates between Normal and Failed, 2) up times and down times are i.i.d. (but with exponential distributions required in closed form method) and 3) all machines have the same production rate μ. Numerical experiments that compare values of such performance measures by different methods are presented in terms of a balanced serial production with no interstage buffer cited from literature. The results were found that: for T > 10, both E(π_T) and Var(π_T) increase by decreasing α (1/MTTF). That is, it seems to indicate that the system performance can not be improved by choosing smaller α. On the contrary, we can achieve that both E(π_T) increases and Var(π_T) decreases by increasing β (1/MTBF).

Keywords:

• transient throughput
• machine failure
• alternating renewal process
• serial production line