Modeling and Analysis of Closed Loop Manufacturing Systems

Using Parameter Coupling

Sheng Yang
*
, Robert J. Riggs and S. Jack Hu

Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA


Abstract: Closed Loop Manufacturing Systems (CLMSs) are extensively used in various industrial environments, and their
performance is impacted by multiple factors such as the total capacity of pallets, the actual number of pallets in the system, the
pallet index speed, and the loading/unloading positions, etc. These factors make the accurate analysis and optimization of
complex CLMSs in practice very difficult and challenging. This paper presents a new parameter coupling technique to model
and analyze a wide range of CLMSs with re-entrant points. The parameter coupling technique in this paper is based on the
traditional mathematic models and analysis of open production lines with unreliable assembly machines and finite buffers.
However, some virtual assembly machines are introduced in our new model to represent the specific phenomena of CLMSs
such as the recirculation of empty pallets and the sharing of conveyor space. Two types of parameter coupling patterns, the
machine parameter coupling, and the buffer capacity coupling, are introduced upon the traditional open manufacturing models
to reflect the characteristics of the CLMSs. The parameter coupling technique is relatively straight forward and effective for
analyzing a broad range of CLMSs. Comparisons between this analytic method and simulation experiments demonstrate the
proposed parameter coupling technique is fast, accurate and robust.

1. Introduction
Closed Loop Manufacturing systems (CLMSs) are widely observed in various industries such as automobile
manufacturing, semiconductor fabrication and electronic appliance assembly. The purpose of using closed loop material
handling systems is to reliably and safely move parts across the facilities for processing while improving the transportation
utilization, saving space, shortening setup time, or reducing overall material handling cost [1]. Another reason for using
CLMSs in practice is to improve the product quality and yield by allowing product rework loop at some re-entrant points [2]. In

*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 734-764-8430. E-mail: samyang@umich.edu

a traditional CLMS, parts are typically loaded onto carriers such as pallets, containers, cartons or carts (all are called pallets in
this paper) at a loading point and then move together with the pallets along a specific conveyor system from processing point A
to another point B without manual intervention. The actual conveyor system may be a line-shaft roller conveyor, an overhead
chain conveyor, a belt driven roller conveyor, or other forms of structures. When the parts are finished with all required
operations at the end of the line, they are unloaded from the pallets and exit the system. The empty pallets are re-circulated and
return back to the original loading machines at a specific re-entrant point for subsequent loading operations, and thus forming a
closed loop on material handling. In practice, a production system may have more than one loop which separates the system
into small segments.
The throughput of such CLMSs are impacted by multiple factors, such as the total capacity of pallets in the system (the
maximum number of pallets that can be in the system), the actual number of pallets released into the system, the pallet index
speed, and the loading/unloading positions, the machine processing speed, and machine reliability, etc. Accurate evaluation of
the CLMSs performance (throughput, work in process, etc.) has been proven to be difficult because of the complex interaction
among various parameters and multiple elements (unreliable machines, shared pallets, unfinished and finished parts, limited
conveyor length, etc.). On the other hand, the analysis and evaluation of such CLMSs is very important for the optimal design,
improvement and control of CLMSs. Over the past five years, through collaboration with industrial partners on continuous
throughput improvement projects, we have seen large scale complex CLMSs in plants with unsuitable parameter selections and
inappropriate configurations which result in high traffic chaos and deteriorated throughput. In one of these cases, an engine
assembly line with two symmetric loops can only reach two thirds of its theoretic production capacity in practice because of the
lower efficiency of the closed loop material handling system.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents an extensive literature review of CLMSs. Section 3
states the system description and assumptions. Section 4 states how analysis of open loop systems can be applied to CLMSs
and Section 5 presents a description of the parameter coupling technique used. The paper closes out with numeric cases and
discussion in Section 6 and conclusions in Section 7.
2. Literature review
Simulation and analytic methods are two major means for estimating and analyzing the performance of CLMSs.
Simulation experimentation has been widely used in manufacturing system analysis because of the robustness and the capacity
of modeling large and complex processes and systems [3, 4]. Smith [5] gave a detailed survey on the use of simulation for

manufacturing system design and operation. However, simulation model development and experimentation are usually time
consuming, more expensive, and require longer execution time to obtain statistically valid results [3, 4, and 6]. On the other
hand, a suitable analytic modeling method may provide faster and more consistent results, and reveal the underlying rationale
of system performance rapidly and more concisely [7, 8]. This paper evaluates the throughput performance of CLMSs using
analytic methods, and compares the results with traditional simulation models.
Significant work has been done on evaluating throughput performance of open manufacturing systems with unreliable
machines and finite buffers using analytic methods. An open manufacturing system in this paper refers to either a serial line in
which machines and buffers are linked along a single flow path one after another, or a one-way ordered directed tree-structured
network in which exactly one sequence of machines and buffers connects any two machines in the system. Open manufacturing
systems include transfer lines, assembly/disassembly systems, parallel lines, split and merge, etc. Contrary to open systems are
closed loop systems, in which re-entrant points in the systems create closed loops and make it impossible to order all machines
based on an upstream-downstream relationship. Koren [9] offered effective methods for classification of manufacturing system
configurations, and studied their impacts on productivity, responsiveness, convertibility and scalability. Dallery and Gershwin
[7], Gershwin [8], and Li et al. [2] provided extensive reviews on the analysis of open manufacturing systems with unreliable
machines and finite buffers. Exact analytic solutions are only available for the simple two-machine-one-buffer open transfer
lines, which include exponential processing time models, continuous fluid models, and deterministic models. Yang et al. [10]
used mixed vector-scalar techniques to model generic balance equations of multi-stage long transfer lines and studied their
properties with limited success. Liu et al. [11] modeled and analyzed the throughput of parallel manufacturing units with
multiple independent unreliable machines at each stage. It used more than two states to model parallel unreliable machines
because of their independent and asynchronous operations in the parallel system. The system balance equations were then
formulated based on a set of new notations of vector manipulations, and were transformed into a matrix form fitting the
properties of the Quasi-BirthDeath (QBD) process. The Matrix-Analytic (MA) method for solving the generic QBD processes
was used to calculate the system throughput.
For longer and more complex transfer lines and tree-structure assembly systems, exact analytic methods do not exist
because of the explosive increase of system states and their complex coupling relations. Approximate methods such as
decomposition and aggregation methods have been developed for the performance evaluation of such larger systems (Gershwin
[8], Gershwin and Burman [12], and Li et al. [2]). The basic ideas of decomposition is to decompose the analysis of the original
system into that of a set of smaller but behavior-equivalent subsystems which are easier to manipulate mathematically. On the

contrary, aggregation is to replace a group of machines and buffers by a single equivalent machine. The equivalent machine has
the same or similar operation, breakdown and repair behaviors as that of the group of machines. Both the decomposition and
aggregation are performed through recursive procedures. If the procedure converges, the system production rate and other
performance measures are obtained. Li et al. [13] developed recursive algorithms to automatically generate assembly system
configurations with equipment selection for automotive battery manufacturing. Um et al. [14] presented the simulation design
and analysis of a flexible manufacturing system with automated guided vehicle system. Koren and Shpitalni [15] studied the
design of reconfigurable manufacturing systems. Huang [16] pointed out that using mean station reliabilities may cause
throughput overestimates in production system design. Huang et al. [17] studied manufacturing system modeling techniques for
the purpose of productivity improvement.
Compared to open systems, only a very limited amount of work has been done on closed loop manufacturing system
analysis. Li et al. [2] gave a detailed survey of previous work for closed loop production systems with a constant number of
carriers in the CLMS. Bastani [18] considered a closed loop conveyor system having a single loading and multiple unloading
stations, and provided an analytic solution to measure effects of the recirculation times of units, and other parameters of the
system. Narahari and Khan [19] modeled reentrant manufacturing systems with inspection stations. Bouhchouch1et al. [20]
modeled a closed loop system as a closed queuing network with finite capacity queues, and proposed an approximation method
to calculate the performance of such queuing networks. However, queuing models are frequently modeled as Poisson processes
through the use of the exponential distribution to make the models analytically tractable. Such mathematic limitations might do
a relatively poor job of mimicking constant processing time and other constraints in actual manufacturing systems.
Frein et al. [21] presented a decomposition approach to approximate the system production rate for homogeneous closed
loop lines. However, this method does not account for the correlation between the actual number of pallets in the buffers and
results in errors in some situations. As an improvement, Gershwin and Werner [22] presented a new decomposition method
which considers both the correlation between population and the probability of blocking and starvation, as well as any number
of machines in the loop. Li, Zheng and Feng [23] studied a two-loop closed production system by means of block-structured
Markov chains. Nazzal et al. [24] proposed a queuing-based analytical model in the design of closed-loop conveyor-based
automated material handling system for semiconductor wafer fabrication facilities.
The throughput of CLMSs in practice is usually impacted by multiple factors such as the total pallets in the system, pallet
indexing speed, and parts loading/unloading positions, etc. To obtain an optimal design and control of such CLMSs, we have to

consider all the factors systematically. Unfortunately, despite the complexity of CLMSs in reality, most of the literature so far
only focuses on studying the impact of one or two factors on the system performance and does not consider or model other
factors in one integrated model. According to Li et al. [2], most CLMS models available so far are over-simplified for the ease
of mathematic manipulation, and therefore sacrifice the accuracy and applicability to actual problems. Furthermore, some of
the solution techniques are too complex to be practical for large scale CLMSs with large number of machines in the loop.
In this paper, we present a new methodology to model CLMSs using the parameter coupling technique based on traditional
open system analysis, and therefore provide a relatively simple but effective solution technique to estimate the actual CLMS
performance. This mission is accomplished by introducing two types of parameter coupling: the machine parameter coupling,
and the buffer capacity coupling. The parameter coupling technique extends the modeling and analyzing capacities of
traditional open manufacturing systems to closed loop systems. Since open systems may have different processing time models,
such as exponential processing time models, continuous fluid models, and deterministic models [2, 8], CLMSs might have
various processing time models accordingly, which makes our parameter coupling technique more versatile than the traditional
queuing theory on modeling complex manufacturing systems.
3. System description and assumptions
A simplified CLMS is depicted in Figure 1. Pallets move along the conveyor path and have three states in the system:
Empty pallets without parts (yellow rectangles with letter E);
Loaded pallets with raw parts waiting for processing (red rectangles with letter L), and
Finished pallets with finished parts waiting for unload and exit (green rectangles with letter F).
Raw parts are introduced into the system with a constant feeding speed
f
and loaded onto empty pallets at loading position
<a>. The loaded pallets then carry raw parts to downstream machines 1, 2, 3 for specific operations. After all the part
operations are complete, the finished pallets take finished parts to the unloading position <b> where the unloading station
separates the finished part from the pallets; the parts exit the system and the empty pallets are released for subsequent loading
operations.


E
E
E
L E
Load
a
L L L
Machine 1 Machine 2 Machine 3
Unload
b
E
F
F
F F F
Raw
Material
Finished
Parts
E
L
F
Empty
Pallet
Loaded
Pallet
Full
Pallet

Figure 1: A Simplified CLMS

We assume that the total conveyor capacity is N, which means the CLMS can hold N pallets at most. The actual pallet
number in the system is denoted by K, KN. The pallets move along the conveyor path at speed
p
(this is called the pallet
moving speed, or conveyor indexing speed). Pallets are evenly distributed in the conveyor system so that the empty pallets
reach the loading station at speed K
p
/N when no downstream machines are down. The loading position and unloading
position in the CLMS are adjustable. The regular machine M
i
has a processing speed of
i
, i=1, 2, 3. All machines and stations
may be unreliable, and thus have their own failure rates and repair rates, respectively.
In the next section, we first introduce the general principles of throughput and inventory analysis on open manufacturing
systems with unreliable machines and finite buffers based on traditional Markov process models. The analytic methods are
then enhanced and extended to the analysis of CLMSs by incorporating the parameter coupling method so that the major
characteristics of the closed loop system are superimposed onto the original analysis of an open system. The impact of
parameters mentioned above (pallet number K, pallet moving speed
p
, loading position <a> and unloading position <b>, etc.)
will be investigated systematically on the overall system throughput measure in CLMSs.

4. Analysis of open systems
The mathematic models for analyzing open manufacturing systems provide foundations for analyzing more complex
CLMSs. Usually a machine in an open manufacturing system have at least four different states as depicted in Figure 2 [11]:

Working
Break
down
Starvation
Blockage
No Part
New Part
fail
repair
New Space
No Space to send
the part

Working: a machine may be working/operating on a part;
Breakdown: a machine may break down and be under repair;
Starvation: a machine is starved when it has no part to operate on, and
Blockage: a machine is blocked if a finished part cannot be sent to the down-stream machine or buffer because of
the lack of available holding space.
At any time the machine must be in one of these states. As time elapses, a machine may switch from one state to another
based on its own condition and its environments (the states of its adjacent machines and buffers that are linked to it), thus
dynamic equations can be established to reflect their behaviors and relations.










Figure 2: Machine states and their transitions (see Ref. [11])

From the statistical viewpoint of long-term running, each machine has a steady proportion of time (mean time) staying at
each state such as mean working time or mean breakdown time. Hence, each state is associated with a positive real number
between 0 and 1 representing the probability of staying at that specific state. The sum of these probabilities should equal 1.
Such state probabilities reveal a machines statistical behaviors and performances in the system and can help identify
bottleneck machines and calculate system performance.
The system state is an aggregation of all its components individual states together, and the specific system throughput and
Work-In-Processes (WIP
s
) at each system state can be deduced from its components current state probability and production

rate. Therefore, the mean (average) system throughput P
s
and inventory level WIP
s
is a weighed sum of throughputs P(i) and
Works-In-Process WIP(i) at each state (i):

} { states all
) state ( ) (
i
S
i Prob i P P (1)

} { states all
) state ( ) (
i
S
i Prob i WIP WIP (2)
Usually three steps are taken to calculate system throughput and WIP based on the above-mentioned state analysis
methods:
Step 1: Calculate the specific throughput P(i) and WIP(i) at each state;
Step 2: Calculate the probabilities of each state Prob(state i);
Step 3: Calculate the product of the above and sum the products over all states using Eq.(1) and Eq.(2).
One of the major difficulties of the above method is that the number of system states increases exponentially with the
increase of the number of machines and buffers in the manufacturing system, which results in difficulty of solving extremely
large number of linear or nonlinear equations. From the viewpoint of computational complexity, the exact analytical solutions
of system performance, such as the system throughput and average WIP levels, are only available in the case of two-machine-
one-buffer serial unit. Gershwin [8], and Gershwin and Burman [12] provided elaborate details on using approximate
decomposition algorithms to estimate the system throughput and WIP for long transfer line (as depicted in Figure 3) and
generic tree-structured Assembly/Disassembly networks (as shown in Figure 4). In Figure 3 and Figure 4, we use squares to
represent machines and circles to represent buffers in the system. A machine that has two or more upstream buffers in front of
the machine performs assembly operations and is called an assembly machine. When it does an assembly operation, it
consumes one part from each of their front buffers. Similarly, a machine that has two or more downstream buffers is a
disassembly machine. When it finishes an operation, it generates one part to each of its downstream buffer.




Figure 3: A transfer line with k machines and (k-1) buffers

M
i
M
i+1
B
i
M
1
B
1
B
k-1
M
k




M
i
B(j,i)
M
j

B(n,i)
M
n


B(i,m)

M
m

B(i,q)

M
q

B(j,r)

Figure 4: Generic tree-structured Assembly/Disassembly network

As pointed out in the literature review, the machine processing time may take different assumptions and models such as
exponential processing time models, continuous fluid models, and deterministic models. In this paper we simply assume that all
machines have a constant processing time, and exponential failure or repair processes, and the material flows are continuous
fluid; however, other models can be used without impacting the applicability of the parameter coupling technique. We assume
that any transfer lines depicted in Figure 3, or tree-structured Assembly/Disassembly networks depicted in Figure 4 are
solvable using the decomposition methods in Gershwin [8], and Gershwin and Burman [12]. We have improved the algorithms
in Gershwin [8], and Gershwin and Burman [12], and implemented a software package named PAMS (Performance Analysis
of Manufacturing Systems) based on Yang et al. [10] and Liu et al. [11] to analyze the system throughput and work-in-process
of any open structure manufacturing systems. PAMS is available for academic users to download and test run from our
University of Michigan website: http://www.umich.edu/~samyang/PAMS.

5. Description of the parameter coupling technique for CLMS


The decomposition methods in Gershwin [8] and Gershwin and Burman [12] provide fast and accurate performance
estimation on transfer lines and tree-structured assembly/disassembly networks. However, it is not directly applicable to
CLMSs. The major reason is that in open systems machine/buffer parameters are independent, and machines/buffers can be
ordered in sequence for the purpose of decomposition. In CLMSs, the re-entrant machines/buffers form a loop and make it
impossible to decompose into a series of smaller and independent equivalent systems, because there is no way to order all
machines and buffers in CLMSs based on an upstream-downstream relationship, which is an prerequisite for the decomposition
method.
Let us consider the CLMS depicted in Figure 1. Since loading station at position <a> combines a raw part and an empty
pallet into a loaded pallet, it is natural to treat the loading station as an assembly machine. The condition of loading raw
material into the system has two prerequisites:
1. The raw material feeding machine feeds a raw material onto the loading machine, with a constant speed of
f
;
2. The conveyor system upstream of the loading machine must send an empty pallet to the loading machine at the same
time.
The second prerequisite can be approximated using a virtual empty pallet feeding machine VM
1
in front of the loading
assembly machine. VM
1
is assumed to have a constant pallet feeding speed of
K
p
/N (3)
based on the following facts: (1) the pallet indexing speed
p
determines the maximum speed it takes an empty pallet to the
loading machine (as long as it does not become blocked or broken down); and (2) the availability of an empty pallet in front of
the loading machine is determined by the density the pallets are distributed in the whole conveyor system, which can be
measured by the probability of K /N.
Similarly, the unloading station at position <b> can be modeled as another assembly machine. The conditions of unloading
a finished part out of the system need two prerequisites:
1. The upstream conveyor system sends a pallet with a finished part to the unloading machine;
2. There is a space immediately available after the unloading machine to take the empty pallet after releasing the finished
part to shipment.

The second prerequisite can be approximated using a virtual empty space feeding machine, VM
2
, in front of the unloading
assembly machine. VM
2
is assumed to have an empty space feeding speed of
max(0, B
4
*(N-K) *
p
/N) (4)
based on the following facts: (1) the conveyor indexing speed
p
determines the maximum speed it releases an empty space to
the unloading machine; (2) however, the availability of an empty space after the unloading machine is determined by the
density an empty space is distributed in the whole conveyor system, which can be measured by the probability of (N-K) /N; (3)
the availability of an empty space after the unloading machine is also impacted by the buffer capacity B
4
after the unloading
machine, and any empty space in B
4
will help hold the unloaded empty pallet; and (4) the empty space feeding speed of VM
2
cannot be negative.
Based on the analysis above, we can use an open manufacturing system with two assembly machines (the loading machine
and the unloading machine, respectively) and two new introduced virtual feeding machines (one for feeding empty pallets, one
for feeding empty space, respectively) to approximate the pallet moving and processing behaviors in the original system. The
new equivalent open system of the CLMS is depicted in Figure 5.
Please note that in a regular open system, the parameters of each element are completely independent and irrelevant from
that of other elements. However, in the equivalent open system of the CLMS depicted in Figure 5, the parameters of those two
virtual feeding machines VM
1
and VM
2
are actually determined by the pallet number K, the total conveyor capacity N (the total
conveyor capacity N should include the machine workspace capacity in the loop), and conveyor index speed
p
. Such kind of
parameter coupling is called machine parameter coupling because they are coupled parameters on those new introduced virtual
machines.
On the other hand, the loading position <a> in the CLMS not only directly determines the available buffer size for holding
the full pallets, but also indirectly impacts the available buffer size for holding the finished pallets as well as the space for
holding empty pallets. So the buffer space B1, B2, B3 and B4 in Figure 5 are coupled by the total space capacity N:
C(B
1
)+C(B
2
)+C(B
3
)+C(B
4
)+#machines=N. When we shift the loading position and increase the buffer size of B1, the buffer
size at B4 will be reduced accordingly. We call this coupling as the buffer capacity coupling in the CLMS.



Raw Part
Feed f
Load
Station
B1 M1 M2
M3
B2
Empty Pallet
Feed p.K/N
VM1
B3
UnLoad
Station
Finished
Parts
B4
Empty Space
Feeding
VM2


Figure 5: The equivalent open system of the original CLMS

By introducing the two different concepts of parameter coupling (the virtual machine parameter coupling, and buffer
capacity coupling) to reflect the machine and space resource sharing mechanism in CLMSs, we have extended the traditional
open line analysis methods to closed loop manufacturing system analysis.

6. Numeric cases and discussion

Now consider the CLMS depicted in Figure 1. All machines M
i
in the system are assumed to have a constant processing
time
i
=2 Parts / min, i= 1, 2, 3. They also have negative exponential distributions of failures and repairs, with Mean Time
Between Failures MTBF=120 minutes, and Mean Time To Repair MTTR=10 minutes, respectively. The material flows are
treated as continuous fluid. The conveyor system has a constant pallet indexing speed
p
. In the first group of experimentations,
we assume
p
=2 Parts/min; and in the second group of experimentations, we change
p
= 3 Parts /min and compare the system
performance changes. Overall, the system has the following parameters:

K: Actual total number of pallets in the system: It is a variable in the model;
Conveyor lengths: B
1
=20; B
2
=20; B
3
=20; B
4
=20;

N: Maximum pallet capacity N = N: B
1
+B
2
+B
3
+B
4
+#machines=85

p
: Pallet indexing speed: We set up two set of pallet indexing speed: (1)
p
= 2 Parts/min; (2)
p
= 3 Parts/min;

f
: Raw part feeding speed into the system:
f
=2 Parts/min;

i
: Processing speed of machine M
i
, i=1, 2, 3:
i
=2 Parts /min; MTBF=120 minutes; MTTR=10 minutes.

Based on the parameter coupling technique we have discussed before, we have built the corresponding PAMS analytic
model, and the WITNESS simulation model, as shown in Figure 6, and Figure 7, respectively (this PAMS model and the
simulation model are available for download at http://www.umich.edu/~samyang/papers/CLMS). Table 1 compares the results
of this parameter coupling technique with that from simulation models (WITNESS is the simulation software from Lanner
Group Inc. which we used in this paper to build the simulation models) on the CLMS in Figure 1. The horizontal axis
represents the number of pallets in the system while the vertical axis represents the corresponding system throughput (JPH
means Job per Hour). Generally speaking, the analytic results match the WITNESS simulation results well, with a 4%~8%
errors in maximum between those two models. We noticed the analytic results consistently provide lower throughput values
than simulation results.



Figure 6: the PAMS model Figure 7: the WITNESS model



Table 1 depicts the specific running results from both PAMS model, and the WITNESS simulation model, with two pallet
indexing speed as (1)
p
= 2 Parts/min, and (2)
p
= 3 Parts/min, respectively. The assumed simulation time is 10 days, with a
warm-up time of two hours.

Table 1: Comparison between PAMS model and WITNESS model
# of Pallets pallet index speed s=2 pallet index speed s=3
SIMU (s=2) PAMS (s=2) % Diff SIMU(s=3) PAMS (s=3) % Diff
1 1.41 1.412 0.14% 2.04 2.12 3.77%
5 6.97 7.058 1.25% 10.11 10.58 4.44%
10 13.83 14.082 1.79% 19.85 20.98 5.39%
15 20.55 20.98 2.05% 29.17 30.91 5.63%
20 27.11 27.662 2.00% 38.09 40.20 5.25%
25 33.39 34.076 2.01% 46.28 48.81 5.18%
30 39.64 40.196 1.38% 53.87 56.75 5.07%
35 45.63 46.013 0.83% 61.06 64.04 4.65%
40 51.29 51.53 0.47% 66.60 70.68 5.77%
45 56.53 56.752 0.39% 72.28 76.53 5.55%
50 61.08 61.685 0.98% 76.67 81.11 5.47%
55 65.62 66.329 1.07% 79.95 82.87 3.52%
60 69.87 70.676 1.14% 81.42 82.89 1.77%
65 73.56 74.688 1.51% 82.00 82.89 1.07%
70 76.81 78.265 1.86% 82.03 82.89 1.04%
75 78.73 81.11 2.93% 82.48 82.89 0.49%
80 80.06 82.65 3.13% 81.45 82.89 1.74%
81 79.70 82.78 3.72% 81.26 82.89 1.97%
82 79.73 82.855 3.77% 81.04 82.89 2.23%
83 80.27 82.88 3.15% 80.72 82.89 2.62%
84 80.01 82.89 3.47% 80.27 82.89 3.16%
85 0.00 0.00 0.00% 0.00 0.00 0.00%
90 0.00 0.00 0.00% 0.00 0.00 0.00%
Max Error 3.77% 5.77%



Figure 8 depicts the pallet number vs. system throughput curve for those two groups of experimentations.




























Figure 8: Comparison between PAMS model and WITNESS model

From Table 1 and Figure 8, we see that the equivalent PAMS model results match the simulation results very well for both
pallet index speed = 2 pallets/min, and pallet index speed = 3 pallets/min. The maximum errors are 3.77% and 5.77%,
respectively. However, each running of the PAMS analytic model takes only 0.0012 seconds in our computer, but the
corresponding simulation model takes 10 minutes to output a steady state result.
We have made the following observations for CLMS pallet number and conveyor design based on our experimentations:
The traditional wisdom of buffer/pallet deployment in open manufacturing systems based on Littles law does not
hold. In open manufacturing systems, we know that the more buffers/pallets in the system, the higher system
throughput we probably obtain (or at least the system throughput will not decrease with the increase of pallets in
the system), which is a direct conclusion from Littles law. However, in CLMSs, the system throughput will reach
a saturation point <SP1> or <SP2> as we increase the pallet numbers gradually. Once the system pallet number
crosses the first saturation point <SP1> or <SP2>, the system throughput will keep quite flat for a period of time.
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Pallet Number
T
h
r
o
u
g
h
p
u
t

(
J
P
H
)

SIM (s=2)
PAMS (s=2)
SIM (s=3)
PAMS (s=3)
<SP1>: Saturation point 1
<SP2>: Saturation point 2
<DP>: Dropping point
<SP2>
<SP1>
<DP>

If we keep increasing the pallet numbers in the system, we will reach another critical dropping point <DP>, and
the system throughput will drop dramatically after this point;
At the very beginning of pallet number increase, the CLMS behaves more like open manufacturing systems,
because the coupling of empty pallets, loaded pallets and finished pallets is very weak at this stage, and the
system throughput increases almost linearly with the increase of pallet numbers at the beginning; however, as the
pallet number increases in the system, the coupling of those three types of pallets, and their sharing of the
common conveyor space will increase and the gain of system throughput will gradually become flat. At the same
time, the increase of pallets will also increase the traffic jam and congestions for the material handling system;
The first saturation point <SP1> or <SP2> is impacted by the pallet indexing speed. Generally speaking, the faster
the pallets move along the conveyor system, the steeper of the throughput versus pallet number curve (figure 8),
and fewer pallets are required to reach a maximum throughput value. On the other hand, the second critical
dropping point <DP> is impacted by the total pallet capacity in the system. The recommended pallet number in
the system is nearby the first saturation point <SP1> or <SP2>.
7. Conclusions

This paper first introduces methods of analyzing open manufacturing systems based on Gershwin and Burmans work. We
propose a parameter coupling method to mathematically model and analyze closed loop manufacturing systems based on the
enhancement of traditional open form production line analysis techniques. Comparisons between simulation models and this
new method show the new method is fast and accurate. On the other hand, our current analytical model on CLMS analysis is
still greatly simplified compared to the complexity of actual CLMS. More technique details need to be addressed in the future
such as considering parallel stations, material handling system (MHS) reliability, etc. in the CLMS.
The parameter coupling technique for CLMSs is more flexible for modeling and analyzing various closed loop
manufacturing systems than the traditional queuing networks approach because the parameter coupling technique presented in
this paper is independent from the specific open manufacturing models (exponential processing time models, continuous fluid
models, and deterministic models, etc.). On the other hand, the open and closed-form queuing theory usually has to assume
Poisson process at a specific time-interval and negative exponential distribution for processing time to make it mathematically
tractable.

Currently the PAMS application can only analyze open manufacturing systems. It does not contain any closed loop
modules yet. To solve the throughput of CLMSs, we have to add virtual machines and coupled buffers manually in the
corresponding open models and maintain the parameter coupling and data consistency manually. We plan to enhance the
current PAMS capabilities by introducing some new closed loop modules in PAMS and implement the parameter coupling
technique into PAMS to automate the analysis of CLMSs and improve the calculation efficiency.

8. Acknowledgement
We would like to express our sincere thanks to Professor Yoram Koren and the Engineering Research Center for
Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems at the University of Michigan for the support of developing the PAMS software. We
also gratefully acknowledge the support from the General Motors Collaborative Research Laboratory in Advanced Vehicle
Manufacturing at the University of Michigan.

REFERENCES

[1] McGuire PM. Conveyors: Application, Selection, and Integration, 1
st
ed., CRC Press, 2009.
[2] Li J, Blumenfeld DE, Huang N, Alden JM. Throughput analysis in production systems: recent advances and future topics.
Int J Prod Res 2009; 47(14): 38233851.
[3] Banks J, Carson JS, Nelson BL, Nicol DM. Discrete-Event System Simulation, 5
th
ed., Prentice Hall, 2009.
[4] Law A. Simulation Modeling and Analysis, 4th edition, McGraw-Hill Publishing Co., 2006.
[5] Smith JS. Survey on the use of simulation for manufacturing system design and operation. Journal of Manufacturing
Systems 2003; 22(2) 157-171.
[6] Taylor SJE, Behli L, Wang X, Turner SJ, Ladbrook J. Investigating distributed simulation at the Ford Motor Company.
Ninth IEEE International Symposium on Distributed Simulation and Real-Time Applications 2005; 139-147.
[7] Dallery Y, Gershwin SB. Manufacturing flow line systems: a review of models and analytical results. Queueing Systems
Theory and Applications, Special Issue on Queueing Models of Manufacturing Systems 1992; 12:3-94.
[8] Gershwin SB. Manufacturing Systems Engineering. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1994.

[9] Koren Y. The Global Manufacturing Revolution: Product-Process-Business Integration and Reconfigurable Systems. 1
st

ed., Wiley, 2010; Chapter 10:253-280.
[10] Yang S, Wu C, Hu SJ. Modeling and analysis of multi-stage transfer lines with unreliable machines and finite buffers.
Annals of Operations Research 2000; 93:405421.
[11] Liu J, Yang S, Wu C, Hu SJ. Multi-state throughput analysis of a two-stage manufacturing system with parallel unreliable
machines and a finite buffer. European Journal of Operational Research 2012; 219(2): 296304.
[12] Gershwin SB, Burman MH. A decomposition method for analyzing inhomogeneous assembly/disassembly systems.
Annals of Operations Research 2000; 93:91-116.
[13] Li S, Wang H, Hu SJ, Lin YT, Abell JA. Automatic generation of assembly system configuration with equipment
selection for automotive battery manufacturing. Journal of Manufacturing Systems 2011; 30(4): 188-195.
[14] Um I, Cheon H, Lee H. The simulation design and analysis of a flexible manufacturing system with automated guided
vehicle system. Journal of Manufacturing Systems 2009; 28(4): 115-122.
[15] Koren Y, Shpitalni M. Design of reconfigurable manufacturing systems. Journal of Manufacturing Systems 2010; 29(4)
130-141.
[16] Huang N. Mean station reliabilities cause throughput overestimates in production system design. Journal of
Manufacturing Systems 2012: 31(2): 184-194.
[17] Huang SH, Dismukes JP, Shi J, Su Q, Wang G, Razzak MA, Robinson DE. Manufacturing system modeling for
productivity improvement. Journal of Manufacturing Systems 2002: 21(4) 249-259.
[18] Bastani A. Analytical solution of closed-loop conveyor systems with discrete and deterministic material flow. European
Journal of Operational Research 1988; 35(2): 187-192.
[19] Narahari Y, Khan LM. Modeling reentrant manufacturing systems with inspection stations. Journal of Manufacturing
Systems 1996; 15(6) 367-378.
[20] Bouhchouch A, Frein Y, Dallery Y. Analysis of a closed-loop manufacturing system with finite buffers. Applied
Stochastic Models and Data Analysis Special Issue: Special Issue on Manufacturing Systems 1993; 9(2): 111-125.
[21] Frein Y, Commault C, Dallery Y. Modeling and analysis of closed-loop production lines with unreliable machines and
finite buffers. IIE Transactions 1996; 28:545554.
[22] Gershwin SB, Werner LM. An approximate analytical method for evaluating the performance of closed loop flow
systems with unreliable machines and Finite buffers. International Journal of Production Research 2007; 45(14): 3085-

3111.
[23] Li N, Zheng L, Feng W. Performance analysis of two-loop closed production systems. Computers and Operations
Research 2009; 36(1): 119-134.
[24] Nazzal D, Jimenez J, Carlo H, Johnson A, Lasrado V. An analytical model for conveyor-based material handling system
with crossovers in semiconductor wafer fabs. IEEE Trans. On Semiconductor Manufacturing 2010; 23(3): 468-476.