System reliability estimation and sensitivity analysis for multi-state manufacturing network with joint buffers-A simulation approach

This paper proposes a simulation approach to estimate system reliability of a multi-state manufacturing network (MSMN) with joint buffers. The system reliability is an indicator to evaluate the probability that an MSMN can provide sufficient capacity to meet a given demand. From the perspective of industrial and systems engineering, the MSMN is constructed as a network topology in which each node denotes an inspection point and arcs denote workstations. In particular, joint buffers with finite volume are embedded in such a topology. Based on the topology, workload processed by each workstation is derived according to a given demand. Subsequently, a simulation approach is applied to randomly generate the current capacity state for the MSMN and to compute the buffer usage under such a state. System reliability is estimated after several iterations of simulation to check if the generated capacity state is available to process the workload or not. Besides, sensitivity analysis is adopted to investigate the most potential location to increase buffer volume. Two practical examples are adopted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed simulation approach. Experimental results show that using joint buffers is more reliable than using parallel buffers in separated production lines.