Determination of buffer sizes for drum–buffer–rope (DBR)-controlled production systems

The present paper describes an analytical approach based on reliability analysis to determine the sizes of constraint buffer and assembly buffer in a drum–buffer–rope-controlled production system. Every machine in the system is modelled as a two-state named as up and down canonical model. Then, with these canonical models and the relationships between the feeder and fed machines, the models for determining constraint buffer and assembly buffer are constructed. To illustrate the approach's practical usefulness, a numerical example is presented. Based on the data analysis, we find that, for constraint buffer, the more feeder machines, the smaller the buffer size needed. And for assembly buffer, the more feeder machines the larger the buffer size needed. Then, two pieces of advice for the production managers to effectively use production-controlling policies are proposed.