Author: Sadr Javad
Publisher: Springer Publishing Company
ISSN: 0254-5330
Source: Annals of Operations Research, Vol.125, Iss.1-4, 2004-01, pp. : 167-190
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Abstract
Complexity has been a long standing obstacle to efficient buffer assignment in transfer lines. For fixed buffer sizes, an approximate transfer line decomposition/aggregation algorithm is developed and its ability to predict line performance is demonstrated via Monte-Carlo simulations. It equates the line with a collection of isolated, unreliable multi-state machines with recursively related statistical parameters. For scalability enhancement, state merging is used to reduce the number of machine states from up to 6 down to 2. An efficient dynamic programming based buffering optimization algorithm which minimizes a combined measure of storage and backlog costs in the transfer line is then presented. Numerical results and comparisons with alternative algorithms are reported.