Transient Performance Evaluation of Flexible Production Lines with Two Bernoulli Machines and Dedicated Buffers

In the contemporary manufacturing environment, flexible production is growing in popularity due to its quick adaptation and response to the market changes and customized requirements. Multi-type products under small-batch-based operations are commonly seen in flexible production. Therefore, dedicated buffers are sometimes used to separate different types of parts that are being processed on one production system. Besides, the steady-state analysis may be ineffective because of the small-batch-based operation, as a result, transient analysis becomes indispensable in investigating the transient behavior of flexible production lines. In this work, we investigate the performance evaluation issue in flexible production systems with multi-type products, two machines obeying the Bernoulli reliability model, and dedicated buffers in real-time. Based on Markovian analysis, a set of auxiliary production lines are presented to decouple the dynamics of the original system. Then, the transient performance measures of interest are approximately evaluated from the auxiliary production lines to avoid the issue of system state explosion. The state explosion is common when applying the Markovian approach. Finally, the proposed analytical algorithm is validated to be with high precision through numerical experiments in contrast with the Monte Carlo simulation.