Analysis of Production System Real-Time Dynamics and Downtime Transient Impact on System Future Production

Downtime has been considered as the most significant contributor to system inefficiency in manufacturing industry. During a downtime, the stoppage at the downtime machine will lead to impact on system production. In addition, it will also change system buffer levels, and thus alter system future behavior, which may lead to impact on system production in future time. For each downtime, a complete evaluation of its production impact during and after the downtime is important for deciding where to allocate limited resources for improving system production. However, the evaluation of downtime impact on system future production has not been studied. Motivated by this need, we investigate how each downtime would change the buffer levels and impact system production in the future. The concept of downtime settling time is proposed to reflect such impact. Given the downtime list, an analytical method is developed to estimate this impact of each downtime. Case studies are conducted to demonstrate the accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed methods.