Analysis of throughput and equipment utilization in large manufacturing systems

Mathematical method and simulation method are usually used to analyze the throughput and equipment utilization of large scale manufacturing systems. High quality models will significantly improve the efficiency and precision of system performance analysis. The basic concepts of timed Petri net are described in the paper, with a timed Petri net model developed for a typical manufacturing system. The timed Petri net model initially analyzes the throughput and equipment utilization using Markov theory. However, this method may have trouble when the Markov equation is used with complex manufacturing systems. ObjectNet simulation software was then used to analyze the timed Petri net model. The results show that simulation method obviously improves the analysis efficiency while maintaining high precision. The method has been used to analyze the optimal configuration of buffers between sequential operation cells.