Estimating the Clearing Function for a Multi-Product Production Network Based on Mean-Value Analysis

Abstract

The clearing function models the non-linear relationship between WIP and throughput and has been proposed for production planning in environments with queuing (congestion) effects. However, incorporating clearing function concept in multi-product manufacturing networks is challenging. The traditional approach has been to model the clearing function at the bottleneck machine only. However, since the bottleneck shifts as the product release mix changes, this approach has its limitations. In this paper, the weakness of the bottleneck approach is highlighted using the mean-value analysis for the closed queuing network case.