Parallel processing is prevalent in many manufacturing and service systems. Many manufactured products are built and assembled from several components fabricated in parallel lines. An example of this manufacturing system configuration is observed at a manufacturing facility equipped to assemble and test web servers. Characteristics of a typical web server assembly line are: multiple products, job circulation, and paralleling processing. The primary objective of this research was to develop analytical approximations to predict performance measures of manufacturing systems with job failures and parallel processing. The analytical formulations extend previous queueing models used in assembly manufacturing systems in that they can handle serial and different configurations of paralleling processing with multiple product classes, and job circulation due to random part failures. In addition, appropriate correction terms via regression analysis were added to the approximations in order to minimize the gap in the error between the analytical approximation and the simulation models. Markovian and general type manufacturing systems, with multiple product classes, job circulation due to failures, and fork and join systems to model parallel processing were studied. In the Markovian and general case, the approximations without correction terms performed quite well for one and two product problem instances. However, it was observed that the flow time error increased as the number of products and net traffic intensity increased. Therefore, correction terms for single and fork-join stations were developed via regression analysis to deal with more than two products. The numerical comparisons showed that the approximations perform remarkably well when the corrections factors were used in the approximations. In general, the average flow time error was reduced from 38.19% to 5.59% in the Markovian case, and from 26.39% to 7.23% in the general case. All the equations stated in the analytical formulations were implemented as a set of Matlab scripts. By using this set, operations managers of web server assembly lines, manufacturing or other service systems with similar characteristics can estimate different system performance measures, and make judicious decisions - especially setting delivery due dates, capacity planning, and bottleneck mitigation, among others.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:51:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 1770.pdf: 2888839 bytes, checksum: 18c57ba21e9192d597b74f8d1d0fc997 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-02-29 / Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais / This is a study of approximations based on parametric decomposition methods used in open queueing networks for modeling discrete job-shop manufacturing systems. These approximations play an important role in evaluating the performance of productive systems and have proved effective in many situations. Besides, these approximations are relatively easy to apply requiring fewer data compared to other methods because they use the average rate and SCV (square coefficient of variation) as the only parameters to characterize the network arrival and service processes. This work is aimed at analyzing and comparing several approximations since they are not yet available in the literature. Hence, several network situations were tested in order to identify the most adequate approximation for each situation. Firstly, a two-station network was analyzed followed by the analysis of a five-station network and lastly, a real example of a semiconductor plant, analyzed by Bitran e Tirupati (1988), was used. In order to reach these goals, the state of the art of approximation methods to evaluate the performance of open queueing networks was studied, and the approximations were compared using the experiment planning technique, important factors for building network configuration and data analysis The findings of this work demonstrate that approximations can be highly efficient to evaluate the performance of discrete job-shop manufacturing systems. Regardless of the configurations studied, it is worth mentioning that approximations 3 and 2, in general, showed the best results if compared to the other values obtained from simulations to evaluate the performance of open queueing networks, OQN,. The other approximations tended to overestimate E(Lj) when the number of stations is higher. This study intends to contribute to the development of computing systems in order to support project decisions and the planning and control of discrete manufacturing systems using approximations based on the parametric decomposition method / Esta dissertação estuda as aproximações baseadas nos métodos analíticos paramétricos de decomposição usados em redes de filas abertas que modelam sistemas discretos de manufatura do tipo job-shop. Estas aproximações possuem um importante papel na avaliação do desempenho de sistemas produtivos e vem se mostrando eficiente para uma grande diversidade de situações. Além disso, são aproximações relativamente fáceis de serem aplicadas, necessitando poucos dados em relação a outros métodos, pois utilizam apenas a média e o scv (coeficiente quadrático de variação) como parâmetros para caracterizar os processos de chegadas e os processos de serviço da rede. O foco deste trabalho está em realizar análises e comparações entre diversas aproximações, pois ainda não existe nenhuma comparação mais efetiva entre elas na literatura. Para isso, diversas situações de redes foram exploradas para identificar quais aproximações são mais adequadas para quais situações. Primeiramente é analisado uma rede com 2 estações, posteriormente uma outra com 5 estações e por fim usou um exemplo real de uma fábrica de semi-condutores, analisada por Bitran e Tirupati (1988). Para que seja possível atingir esses objetivos, estudou-se o estado da arte das aproximações dos métodos de avaliação de desempenho para redes de filas abertas, e comparouse as aproximações por meio de técnicas de planejamento de experimentos, parte importante na construção das configurações das redes e análise dos resultados. Os resultados apresentados nesta dissertação mostram que essas aproximações podem ser bem eficientes ao avaliar o desempenho de sistemas discretos de manufatura do tipo job-shop. Independente das configurações analisadas, vale destacar a Aproximação 3 e a Aproximação 2, em geral, obtendo os melhores resultados, entre as aproximações, em comparação aos valores obtidos pela simulação para avaliar o desempenho de redes de filas OQN. As outras aproximações demonstraram certo comportamento em sobreestimar E(Lj), quando o número de estações aumentam. Este estudo pretende contribuir para o desenvolvimento de sistemas computacionais 13 para apoiar decisões de projeto, planejamento e controle dos sistemas discretos de manufatura, usando aproximações baseadas em métodos de decomposição paramétrico