Transient Performance Analysis of Five-Machine Rework Production Lines With Bernoulli Machines, Finite Buffers and Batch Production

In many production systems, defective parts are not directly discarded because of production costs, but are sent to the rework line for reprocessing. In the current literature, the steady-state performance of rework lines have been studied extensively. However, for small and medium-volume production systems, the production lines run most of the time under transient conditions. Steady-state analysis is not appropriate in such situations. Therefore, it is critical to study the transient behavior of the rework systems. This paper considers a five-machine rework line with batch production. We derive the state transition probabilities of the five-machine rework system through the dynamic characteristics. Moreover, the transient performance indices are studied. Finally, an illustrative example is given to demonstrate the reliability of the method, and the properties of rework production systems are investigated.