PERFORMABILITY STUDIES OF AUTOMATED MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS WITH MULTIPLE PART TYPES

In this paper, we consider the transient performance analysis of failu re-prone manufacturing systems producing multiple part types. We decom pose the exact monolithic model into (a) a slower time scale structure state process modeling the failure and repair and (b) a faster time s cale performance model describing the part processing and the material movement. We combine the solution of these two models to show that th e accumulated reward over a given time interval is a solution of a set of forward or adjoint multidimensional linear hyperbolic partial diff erential equations. This result generalizes the existing results on co mposite performance-dependability analysis of manufacturing systems. W e also present efficient numerical methods for computing the distribut ion of the cumulative operational time, and the mean and variance of t he cumulative production over a given time interval. Further, we bring out the significance of these results in the manufacturing systems co ntext through several examples.