In: IEEE Trans. on Robotics and Automation, Vol. 10, No. 2, pages 245-258. 1994.
Abstract: This paper deals with the transient analysis of manufacturing systems in the presence of failures and repairs. The exact model is decomposed into: (1) a structure state process, modeling the failure and repair events which occur at a slower time scale, and (2) a performance model, representing the part processing and material movement events occurring at a faster time scale. The solutions of these two models are combined to yield the means and standard deviation of cumulative production over an interval. Such studies, called combined performance-dependability studies, are important in the manufacturing context. Combined performance and dependability (performability) is defined in the manufacturing context, and a mathematical formulation is provided. Detailed performability studies are carried out for cellular manufacturing systems, in particular for a flexible manufacturing cell and a two-cell manufacturing system featuring blocking and prioritized centralized repair. Generalized stochastic Petri nets are used for modeling the analyzed systems. Several numerical examples are also presented.
Keywords: cellular manufacturing systems, dependability analysis, performance analysis, stochastic Petri nets, transient analysis.