Title: Performance analysis of two stage flow lines with non-identical and unreliable parallel machines that produce good quality and defective products

Authors: Angelos Kourepis; Alexandros Diamantidis; Konstantinos Doios; Konstantinos Papalamprou

Addresses: Department of Economics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece ' Department of Economics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece ' Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece ' Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

Abstract: This manuscript analyses systems with two workstations, one buffer and non-identical parallel unreliable machines. The parallel machines are subject to operational and quality failures. All parallel machines have exponential service, operational failure, quality failure and repair rates. Quality failures in addition to the common operational failures are used to model and analyse systems where defective parts can be produced. A recursive algorithm is proposed that generates the transition probabilities matrix for any value of the system's parameters. Moreover, after solving all the corresponding transition probabilities equations, the most important performance measures are calculated such as the production of good quality and defective parts and the average work in progress.

Keywords: unreliable parallel machines; flow lines; quality failures; defective products; Markov chain processes; performance evaluation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOR.2024.139284

International Journal of Operational Research, 2024 Vol.50 No.3, pp.332 - 363

Received: 18 Oct 2021
Accepted: 02 Nov 2021
Published online: 28 Jun 2024 *

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