Stochastic Flow Model-Based Representation of System-Level Manufacturing Quality

This paper describes the application of the stochastic-flow-modeling (SFM) approach to represent the quality behavior of a manufacturing system. The paper extends the basic one-product type SFM to that of a multiple-product manufacturing system. This quality SFM-based model has aggregation by machine, product, and operational shift. The paper also describes potential supervisory control architectures that could be used in conjunction with this quality-based SFM. The distribution parameter fitting is handled with static and adaptive approaches and a comparison between these two approaches is given. Finally, results are presented for different system examples that show the accuracy of the SFM modeling approach.