A queueing network model of flexible manufacturing systems consisting of cells

We study a class of queueing networks in which a number of subnetworks have a limited global capacity, i.e. the total number of customers present in the subnetwork cannot exceed a fixed value. We show that under a condition called "global reversible routing", the system has the so-called product-form solution. We then derive an algorithm to predict the performance of the system. Though the result is of interest for any kind of queueing systems, such as Computer systems and communication networks, we emphasize the flexible manufacturing system application. We show that our model is especially well suited to handle a flexible manufacturing system consisting of cells, where each cell is composed of a set of work stations and a local storage area.