Performance analysis for production systems in series

Investigates the dynamic behaviour of production systems in series. The authors obtain some new results, which throw some insights on how to deal with the issue of performance analysis in manufacturing systems. The authors give expressions for the exit times of the workpieces. Based on the formulae the authors propose a control policy for the release times of the workpieces, which is optimal for design of the buffer capacity of each buffer. Finally, the authors give a necessary and sufficient condition for the stability of the production systems consisting of services centers in series.