| In this research, performance analyses of a set of stochastic systems originated from a real continuous material flow system are carried out. The real system in many ways including its overall topology and random material arrival and departure processes differs significantly from the continuous material flow systems previously modeled. Particularly, this thesis proposes an approximate decomposition model to obtain performance measures of the original system such as the average material levels in the buffer storages, and as well as up, down, starvation and blocking probabilities of each machine in the system. Furthermore, this research develops performance models for two-node systems: systems with nodes alternatively dedicated to different types of materials, systems with nodes having significant variability in their down times and systems with random material arrival (or departure) process. We also propose a discrete system that approximates the steady-state behavior of two-valve continuous material systems. |
