Transient Performance Analysis of Production Lines:Theory and Applications

摘要

Extensive research efforts have been spent on steady state analysis of production systems.However,very few analytical results are available regarding transient behavior of such systems.In fact,many production systems operate entirely or partially in the transient regime.For instance,in produc-tion systems with perishable products(food,metal processing,painting,etc.),every shift is started with some buffers being empty.In addition,some systems operate with time varying pa-rameters(e.g.,workforce,machine startup/shutdown schedule,etc.).Clearly,steady state analysis is not applicable for such systems.Moreover,to study real-time behavior of productions systems,e.g.,after recovering from major breakdowns,tran-sient analysis must be carried out.Therefore,transient analysis is of significant theoretical and practical importance.In this work,a theoretical framework based on Markovian analysis and recursive aggregation is developed for performance analysis of production lines during transients,while applications of the methodology in several production scenarios are discussed.