An efficient algorithm for performance analysis of transfer lines and its convergence

An examination is made of the performance analysis of a transfer line with unreliable machines and finite buffers. All the machines have the same processing times. A new decomposition method is proposed which decomposes a line into a set of two-machine lines. A set of equations is established to find performance measures such as production rate and average buffer levels. A simple iterative algorithm is then proposed to solve these equations. It is proved that the set of decomposition equations has a unique solution and that the computation algorithm converges to this unique solution