Analysis of a general Markovian two-stage continuous-flow production system with a finite buffer

Fluid flow models are used in the performance evaluation of production, computer, and telecommunication systems. In order to develop a methodology to analyze general Markovian continuous material flow production systems with two processing stages with an intermediate finite buffer, a general single-buffer fluid flow system is modelled as a continuous time, continuous-discrete state space stochastic process and the steady-state distribution is determined. Various performance measures such as the production rate and the expected buffer level are determined from the steady-state distributions. The flexibility of this methodology allows analysis of a wide range of models by specifying only the transition rates and the flow rates associated with the discrete states of each stage. Therefore, the method is proposed as a tool for performance evaluation of general Markovian continuous-flow systems with a finite buffer. The solution methodology is illustrated by analyzing a production system where each machine has multiple up and down states associated with their quality characteristics. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.