Manufacturing flow line systems: a review of models and analytical results
Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications - Special issue on queueing models of manufacturing systems
Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications
Sample-path optimization of convex stochastic performance functions
Mathematical Programming: Series A and B
Sample Path Analysis for Continuous Tandem Production Lines
Discrete Event Dynamic Systems
IPA for continuous stochastic marked graphs
Automatica (Journal of IFAC)
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We derive estimators of throughput sensitivity to changes in buffer capacity for continuous flow models of a transfer line comprising two machines separated by a buffer of finite capacity, where machines are subject to operation-dependent failures, i.e., a machine cannot fail when it is idle. Both repair times and failure times may be general, i.e., they need not be exponentially distributed. The system is hybrid in the sense that it has both continuous dynamics—as a result of continuous material flow—and discrete events: failures and repairs. The combination of operation-dependent failures and buffer capacity as the parameter of interest make the derivative estimation problem difficult, in that unlike previous work on continuous flow models, careful use of conditional expectation (i.e., smoothed perturbation analysis) is required to obtain unbiased estimators.