Performance evaluation of multi-product manufacturing systems with asynchronous exponential machines

This paper is devoted to modeling and analysis of multi-product manufacturing systems with asynchronous exponential machines and finite non-dedicated buffers. In such systems, each machine may process different types of products with different speeds, and buffers are shared for all products. Analytical methods to evaluate the system performance are developed. Formulas are derived to calculate line throughput in one- and two-machine lines, and a convergent recursive procedure is introduced for longer lines. The numerical results show that the methods lead to high accuracy in performance evaluation.