Sensitivity analysis of machine interference in manufacturing systems

A class of manufacturing systems is presented in which the machine interference problem plays an important role in production. We consider a single server (robot) in addition to two types of random machine stoppages with priorities. A detailed analysis has been focused on two measures: robot utilization and machine efficiency. It has been shown that one has to make a compromise between the above two sensitive measures. We have further computed the optimum number of machines that can be served by a robot. A novel optimization technique is used to fulfill this requirement. The simulation results reveal that the number of machines as well as the service rate can be utilized as decision variables in the problem at hand. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd