Infinite Buffer Closed Lines -

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As discussed in the principles section, given a line with a bottleneck rate r_b and the raw processing time T₀, it is possible to compare its performance with the practical worst case, performance. In general, if the performance is less than the practical worst case significant scope of improving the performance may exits, as discussed in the improvement section to follow. We illustrate this method of diagnosis with an example.

Example of Line Diagnosis

Suppose for the transmission line in the Example:

The bottleneck rate is 5 transmissions per hour.
The raw process time is 2 hours.
Current throughput is 3 transmissions per hour.
Current WIP level is 25 transmissions.

Critical WIP is r_bT₀ = 5 x 2 = 10 transmissions.
The throughput of the PWC with these parameters and WIP=25 is:

TH_PWC = [WIP/(WIP+W₀-1)]r_b = [25/(25+10-1)]5 = 3.68 transmissions/hr

Since this is higher than actual TH, the current situation is worse than the practical worst case, which means that improvement opportunities exist.

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