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Performance modeling of a manufacturing cell with a single material transporter: An approximation

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Abstract

We consider a flexible manufacturing system with a number of workstations, a single material transporter, and a common storage space of finite capacity. The material handling delay times are explicitly considered in the model and assumed to follow a two-stage Coxian distribution. The material processing times on a workstation also have a two-stage Coxian distribution. The routing of parts within the system follows a Markov chain. An approximate performance model is developed and the results are compared with the exact or simulation results. We also investigate how this performance model compares to a simulation with deterministic routing and processing times. Finally, we study the effect, on the performance measures, of ignoring the material transporter or of modeling the transporter as a central server with aggregation of routing information.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, P.O. Box 909, 08855-0909, Piscataway, NJ

    Mohsen A. Jafari

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  1. Mohsen A. Jafari
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Jafari, M.A. Performance modeling of a manufacturing cell with a single material transporter: An approximation. Int J Flex Manuf Syst 2, 63–86 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00227798

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