Performance analysis of a flexible manufacturing cell feeding several machines with finite buffer capacity
Résumé
We study the relationship between buffer capacity and productivity in a system consisting of a flexible cell feeding several dediciated machines. The processing times at both the flexible cell and the dedicated machines are random variables. Each dedicated machine has a finite local buffer to hold parts that are waiting to be processed and the flexible cell is required to produce parts according to specified production ratios. We develop a simple analytic estimate for machine utilization in steady state for this system. Such an analytic estimate may be useful in the planning stages of this kind of manufacturing system both in terms of understanding the tradeoff between increasing buffer capacity and utilization and in estimating the appropriate size and distribution of buffers in the system. Comparison with simulation for the case of exponential processing times indicate that the estimate works reasonably well.