Reliability estimation for a stochastic production system with finite buffer storage by a simulation approach

Abstract

This study develops a novel Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) approach to estimate system reliability for a stochastic production system with finite buffer storage. System reliability indicates the probability of all workstations providing sufficient capacities to satisfy a specified demand, as well as that all buffer stations are not running out of storage. First, buffer stations are modeled in a stochastic production network (SPN) model and their storage usage is analyzed based on the network-structured SPN. Second, an MCS is developed to generate the system state and to check the storage usage of buffer stations to determine whether the demand can be satisfied. After repeated simulations, the system reliability of the SPN can be estimated. Experimental results show that the proposed MCS approach is effective and efficient in estimating system reliability with reasonable quality for an SPN within a reasonable time. More importantly, system reliability will be overestimated with infinite buffer storage, and thus, it is worth studying finite buffer storage.