AE Simulator A Serial Production Line Simulator

Abstract

Consider an unreliable serial line with capacitated buffers between machines. Operators are required to repair machines when they fail and machines are blocked when the buffers are full and are starved when the buffers are empty. Adding buffer space and increasing the number of operators will certainly increase the throughput of that line. But the question that should be answered is “Is it worth adding buffer or operator from a cost perspective?” It may or may not be. If you produce something valuable or the cost of buffer and operator is relatively lower than the revenue per product, it is worth it. The increase in throughput when you add buffer or operator will answer this question. In this study, the trade-off between buffer allocation and number of operators is going to be investigated in unreliable serial lines. A tool which will help to estimate the throughput of unreliable serial lines has been developed and is discussed.