An Analytical Approach to Cycle Time Evaluation in an Unreliable Multi-Product Production Line with Finite Buffers

This thesis develops an analytical approximation method to measure the performance of a multi-product unreliable production line with finite buffers between workstations. The performance measure used in this thesis is Total Cycle Time. The proposed approximation method generalizes the processing times to relax the variation of product types in a multi-product system.;A decomposition method is then employed to approximate the production rate of a multi-product production line. The decomposition method considers . generally distributed processing times as well as random failure and repair. A GI/G/1/N queuing model is also applied to obtain parameters such as blocking and starving probabilities that are needed for the approximation procedure.;Several numerical experiments under different scenarios are performed, and results are validated by simulation models in order to assess the accuracy and strength of the approximation method. Consequent analysis and discussion of the results is also presented.