PROPERTIES OF FORK JOIN QUEUING-NETWORKS WITH BLOCKING UNDER VARIOUS OPERATING MECHANISMS/

Queueing networks with fork/join mechanisms and finite-capacity buffer s are of interest because they are suited to modeling and evaluating t he performance of a large class of discrete event systems such as manu facturing systems (e.g., manufacturing flow lines, assembly lines, kan ban controlled manufacturing systems), In a recent paper, Dallery, Liu , and Towsley considered a special class of queueing networks with for k/join mechanisms and finite-capacity buffers called Basic Fork/Join Q ueueing Networks with Blocking (B-FJQN/B). For this class of networks, they established duality, reversibility, symmetry, and concavity prop erties. However, in order to be able to accurately model the various o perating mechanisms (blocking, loading, and unloading mechanisms) enco untered in manufacturing systems, it is necessary to consider a larger class of networks that will be referred to as Fork/Join Queueing Netw orks with Blocking (FJQN/B), The purpose of this paper is to introduce this class of queueing networks and investigate its properties. The a pproach is to first show that any FJQN/B can be equivalently represent ed as a B-FJQN/B and then use results derived in the Dallery ef al, pa per for the underlying B-FJQN/B to establish the properties of the mod el under consideration. This approach is also used to compare the beha vior of two models having different operating mechanisms, The usefulne ss of these results for performance evaluation and optimization of man ufacturing systems is illustrated through a few examples.