Non-stationary Models of Manufacturing Systems: Relevance and Analysis

Performance evaluation studies in manufacturing sys-tems have traditionally considered models in which the arrival process and service process are time in-dependent. Real-world manufacturing systems how-ever, are subjected i o highly complex and usually tame-dependent input workloads. This motivates the study of performance models of manufacturing systems un-der non-stationary conditions. In this paper, we present several situations in manufacturing systems where non-stationary models are relevant. For study-ing such models, transient analysis is more appropri-ate than steady-state analysis. We explore various techniques fo r analyzing such models, including nu-merical and simulation techniques, and present two il-lustrative examples.