Instruct: Identify the main and secondary category of Arxiv papers based on the titles and abstracts
Query: Performance evaluation of a production line operated under an echelon
  buffer policy   We consider a production line consisting of several machines in series
separated by intermediate finite-capacity buffers. The line operates under an
"echelon buffer" (EB) policy according to which each machine can store the
parts that it produces in any of its downstream buffers if the next machine is
occupied. If the capacities of all but the last buffer are zero, the EB policy
is equivalent to CONWIP. To evaluate the performance of the line under the EB
policy, we model it as a queueing network, and we develop a method that
decomposes this network into as many nested segments as there are buffers and
approximates each segment with a two-machine subsystem that can be analyzed in
isolation. For the case where the machines have geometrically distributed
processing times, we model each subsystem as a two-dimensional Markov chain
that can be solved numerically. The parameters of the subsystems are determined
by relationships among the flows of parts through the echelon buffers in the
original system. An iterative algorithm is developed to solve these
relationships. We use this method to evaluate the performance of several
instances of 5- and 10-machine lines including cases where the EB policy is
equivalent to CONWIP. Our numerical results show that this method is highly
accurate and computationally efficient. We also compare the performance of the
EB policy against the performance of the traditional "installation buffer"
policy according to which each machine can store the parts that it produces
only in its immediate downstream buffer if the next machine is occupied.

18
The categories of this paper are: econ
21
The categories of this paper are: adap-org
19
The categories of this paper are: eess
27
The categories of this paper are: comp-gas
31
The categories of this paper are: ao-sci
29
The categories of this paper are: funct-an
14
The categories of this paper are: math-ph
3
The categories of this paper are: physics
10
The categories of this paper are: q-bio
20
The categories of this paper are: acc-phys
37
The categories of this paper are: supr-con
22
The categories of this paper are: chao-dyn
16
The categories of this paper are: stat
23
The categories of this paper are: solv-int
0
The categories of this paper are: hep-ph
5
The categories of this paper are: gr-qc