Queueing models of certain manufacturing cells under product-mix sequencing rules

This paper considers a manufacturing cell composed of a machining center and several parallel downstream production stations. In the machining center, there is an ample supply of raw material for a number of different part-types. For each type, parts are first processed in the machining center, and then in one of parallel production stations (one for each type). The decision to determine which type to produce (production sequence) occurs whenever the machining center completes the process of a part. The production sequencing rules under consideration are rotation rules and random rules, respectively. By using such rules, the resulting product-mix meets a preset level. Based on a decomposition technique, solution procedures are developed to compute the response time of parallel stations in the manufacturing cell using such product-mix sequencing rules. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate the solution procedures and to investigate the impact of the production sequence on the overall average response time.