Performance Evaluation of Two-Machine Bernoulli Lines with Conveyor Buffers

Serial production lines with conveyor buffers are commonly seen in production practice, where the work-in-process parts are initially positioned on the conveyor belt and then transported to the downstream machine to be processed. The time taken for this transfer, referred to as transportation time, is a significant factor in the overall efficiency of the production line and cannot be overlooked. In this paper, an analytical approach is developed, providing exact solutions to transient and steady-state performance metrics evaluation in two-machine Bernoulli lines with conveyor buffers. Numerical experiments demonstrate the precision and efficiency of the proposed approach. A sensitivity test highlights the significant impact of conveyor speeds on productivity optimization.