Investigation of the effect of buffer storage capacity and repair rate on production line efficiency

Abstract

The buffer allocation problem concerning the size and location of storage between the stages of a flow line is a critical research area in the design of production lines. In this study, a production system consisting of two unreliable stages and a buffer between them is considered; the first stage incorporates two identical machines in parallel and the second stage consists of a single machine. A simulation model is designed and used to evaluate the effect of the buffer capacity and the repair rates of machines on production line efficiency. The results revealed the capacity of buffer that yields the maximum production line efficiency with various repair rate values. Keywords: Buffer allocation, Flow line, Simulation model, Production line efficiency