Performance evaluation of production lines subject to time and operation dependent failures using Petri nets

Performances of production lines are often greatly disturbed by machine failures. Two failure models are considered most relevant for manufacturing systems. This paper addresses failure-prone production lines with limited buffers. Each machine is subject to either time-dependent failures or operation-dependent failures. A machine subject to time-dependent failures can fail at any time even it is idle and a machine subject to operation-dependent failures can fail only when it is working on a part. A timed Petri net model is proposed to formally describe the behavior of a production line subject to both types of failures. A simulation algorithm based on this Petri net model is then proposed for performance evaluation of production lines under both types of machine failures.