Combining multi-class queueing networks and inventory models for performance analysis of multi-product manufacturing logistics chains

Manufacturing logistics chains consist of complex interconnections among several suppliers, manufacturing facilities, warehouses, retailers and logistics providers. Performance modeling and analysis become increasingly more important and difficult in the management of such complex manufacturing logistics networks. Many research studies have developed different methods to solve such problems. However, most of the research focuses on logistics systems with either a single stage or single type of product. In the real world, industries always involve multiple stages and produce multiple types of products at one stage. This paper is geared toward developing a new methodology by combining multi-class queueing networks and inventory models for the performance analysis of multi-product manufacturing logistic chains. A network of multi-class inventory queue models is presented for the performance analysis of a serial multi-stage manufacturing logistics chain in which multiple types of products are produced at each stage. A job queue decomposition strategy is employed to analyze the major performance measures and an approach for aggregating input streams and separating output streams is proposed to link all the sites or nodes in the logistics chain together. Numerical results show that the proposed method is effective for the application examples.