Real-time performance evaluation and improvement of assembly systems with Bernoulli machines and finite production runs

Extensive research has been investigated in the past several decades to evaluate the performance of manufacturing systems under rigid production mode. Based on the deployment of the new manufacturing strategies (e.g. smart manufacturing), real-time performance analysis, continuous improvement and efficient production management of flexible production systems are urgently to be investigated. Therefore, we study the problems of real-time performance evaluation and bottleneck of assembly systems in this paper. The system is assumed to have Bernoulli machines and finite production runs. We first derive the mathematical model of the system and then, derive the analytical formulas for performance evaluation of systems with three Bernoulli machines. In addition, we propose a decomposition and aggregation-based algorithm to approximate the system performances with high accuracy and computational efficiency. The idea is then extended to generalised assembly systems. Finally, the method of bottleneck analysis by using completion time bottleneck indicator is introduced and evaluated by numerical justification.