A Near-optimal Buffer Size Control Problem for Hybrid Production System with Bursty Demand Arrivals

The failure prone production system with bursty demand arrivals is examined, where the demand arrival is Possion process and the burst size is exponentially distributed. For the hybrid systems, the buffer is controlled and the buffer size should be changed by the demand rate. The continuous flow model of the unreliable manufacturing systems is considered and the hedging point control policy is involved in. The demand with burst size is dealt with by an approximate technique and then a decomposition method is utilized to determine the near-optimal buffer size. Meanwhile, an idea of purchasing extra capacity is introduced to the hybrid system and a so-called blockage hedging point is obtained. Numerical results not only testify the method but also show us the failure transition rate of the downstream machine has a stronger impact on the optimal buffer size than those of the upstream machine.