Estimating customer service levels in automated multiple part-type production lines: An analytical method

Abstract

We develop an approximate analytical method to estimate the customer service levels in automated multiple part-type production lines. The production line consists of several processing stations in series with finite intermediate buffers, one for each part-type. The main contributions include the analysis of multiple part-type systems with machine setups, bypass routings and stations having combinations of shared and dedicated machines. This research is motivated by observations of real production lines. We use the continuous material approximation in modeling the system behaviour and develop a new approximate decomposition method to analyze the performance of the system. Validation experiments conducted on production lines with different configurations show good accuracy in the estimation of customer service levels compared to simulation. We use an example case study to demonstrate the application of the model in the performance improvement of a system that is based on a real production line. The analytical model is proposed as a reliable and fast performance analysis tool for the optimization of automated multiple part-type production lines with complex configurations. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.