Approximate MVA for closed queueing network models of FMS with a block-and-wait mechanism

Abstract Closed queueing networks with a central server configuration are used to model Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS) in which the material handling system consists of a single cart and the finite capacity of local buffers leads to blocking. Under the assumptions of an exponential service time distribution and a block-and-wait mechanism, an efficient approximate Mean Value Analysis (MVA) method is developed to evaluate the performance measures of the resulting non product-form queueing networks. The accuracy of the proposed method is established by comparison with the results of simulation experiments.