Modeling manufacturing dependability

A new approach in evaluating the availability of cellular manufacturing systems is presented. The approach divides the system into two subsystems without constructing a system level Markov chain. The approach incorporates imperfect coverage and imperfect repair factors in the Markovian models. These factors have great impact on the availability of the whole system. The approach was used in the evaluation of transients and steady-state performances of three alternative designs based on industrial samples. It was shown that imperfections that constitutes even a small percentage of the systems' faults reduces the availability of the whole system at large.