Performance indicator for a stochastic- ow manufacturing network with reworking actions based on reliability

This paper studies the performance evaluation for a manufacturing system considering reworking actions from the industrial engineering perspective. Due to failure, partial failure, and maintenance, the capacity of each machine in a manufacturing system is stochastic. Therefore, a manufacturing system is constructed as a stochastic- ow network, namely, a Stochastic-Flow Manufacturing Network (SFMN) herein. To evaluate the capability of an SFMN with reworking actions, we measure the probability that the SFMN satises demand, and such a probability is referred to as a system reliability. First, a decomposition method is proposed to decompose the SFMN into one general processing path and several reworking paths. Subsequently, two algorithms are designed for dierent network models to generate the lower boundary vector of the machineʹs capacity for guaranteeing that the SFMN produces sucient products. The system reliability of SFMN is derived in terms of such a vector afterwards. According to the system reliability, the production manager may plan and adjust the production capacity in a exible competing environment as customer demand changes.