System Reliability Estimation for a Manufacturing Network with Joint Buffers

This paper develops a Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) approach to estimate the performance of a multistate manufacturing network (MMN) with joint buffers. In the MMN, products are allowed to be produced by two production lines with the same function to satisfy demand. A performance index, system reliability, is applied to estimate the probability that all workstations provide sufficient capacity to satisfy a specified demand and buffers possess adequate storage. The joint buffers with finite storage are considered in the MMN. That is, extra work-in-process output from different production lines can be stored in the same buffer. An MCS algorithm is proposed to generate the capacity state and to check the storage usage of buffers to evaluate whether the demand can be satisfied or not. System reliability of the MMN is estimated through this MCS algorithm. Besides, performability for demand pairs assigned to production lines can be obtained. A practical example of touch panel manufacturing system is used to demonstrate the applicability of the MCS approach. Experimental result shows that system reliability is overestimated when buffer storage is assumed to be infinite. Moreover, joint buffer for an MMN is more reliable than buffers are installed separately in different production lines.