Performance Analysis of Serial Production Lines with Deteriorating Product Quality

In manufacturing systems with perishable products (e.g., food, metal processing, etc.), the quality of a part is highly dependent on its residence time within the system. However, behavior and properties of these systems have not been studied systematically, and, therefore, is carried out in this paper. Specifically, we assume that the probability that each unfinished part is of good quality is a decreasing function of its residence time in the preceding buffer. Then, in the framework of serial production lines with machines having Bernoulli reliability model, we derive closed-form formulas for performance evaluation in the two-machine line case, and develop an aggregation-based procedure to approximate the performance measures in M > 2-machine lines. In addition, we study monotonicity properties of these production lines using numerical experiments. Finally, a case study in an automotive stamping plant is discussed.