Modelling the performance of flexible manufacturing systems

An open-queueing network model with general service times and limited local buffers is developed to evaluate the performance of the flexible manufacturing system (FMS). The model accommodates two major characteristics of the FMS, namely, improving machine utilization and reducing work-in-process storage. A ‘flow equivalent’ decomposition approach is developed to derive approximate solutions to the model. Numerical examples are studied to illustrate the accuracy of the approximations.

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