Abstract
An automatic transfer line consists of a number of interconnected stages, and operation stop-pages of any stage have an influence on other stages. This interference causes the decrease of the production rate. To avoid this interference a buffer storage is installed. In this paper we consider two-stage balanced lines where stage 1 has one machine but stage 2 is a parallel stage and consists of S same machines. Dividing a cycle time of stage 2 into S cycle times of stage 1 and observing the line state on every divide cycle time, we present the Markov model of line behavior. Furthermore we numerically analyze the effects of a ;parallel stage on the production rate and the effectiveness of installing a buffer sorage.
