On the transient behaviour of a merge production system

Abstract

In this paper, the stochastic behaviour of a merge production system which has two parallel stations in the first stage followed by a single station in the second stage is analysed. A mathematical model is developed using semi-regenerative phenomena to study the transient behaviour of the merge production system and the system of convolution integral equations satisfied by various state probabilities are obtained. An iterative numerical technique is used to solve the system of integral equations obtained to evaluate various measures of system performance.