Manufacturing Systems Modeling and Analysis

This textbook was developed to ?ll the need for an accessible but comprehensive presentation of the analytical approaches for modeling and analyzing models of manufacturing and production systems. It is an out growth of the efforts within the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department at Texas A&M to develop and teach an analytically based undergraduate course on probabilisticmodeling of m- ufacturingtype systems. The level of this textbook is directed at undergraduate and masters students in engineering and mathematical sciences. The only prerequisite for students using this textbook is a previous course covering calculus-based pr- abilityand statistics. The underlyingmethodology is queueing theory, and we shall develop the basic concepts in queueing theory in suf?cient detail that the reader need not have previously covered it. Queueing theory is a well-established dis- plinedatingback to theearly 1900'sworkof A. K. Erlang, a Danish mathematician, on telephone traf?c congestion. Although there are many textbooks on queueing theory, these texts are generally oriented to the methodological development of the ?eld and exact results and not to the practical application of using approximations in realistic modeling situations. The application of queueing theory to manufact- ing type systems started with the approximation based work of Ward Whitt in the 1980's. His paper on QNA (a queueing network analyzer) in 1983 is the base from which most applied modeling efforts have evolved. There are several textbooks with titles similar to this book.

Guy L. Curry is a Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University. He received B.S. and M.S. degrees in mathematics from the University of Oklahoma and Wichita State University, respectively, and a Ph.D. in industrial engineering from the University of Arkansas. Prior to joining Texas A&M University, he was an operations research analyst with the Boeing and Sun Oil. He has received several research and teaching awards and co-authored three books. Dr. Curry teaches courses in simulation, optimization, and production /manufacturing systems. His current research interests include modeling and analysis techniques for production and manufacturing systems.

Richard M. Feldman is a Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University. He received a B.A. degree in mathematics from Hope College, an M.S. degree in mathematics from Michigan State University, an M.S. degree in Industrial and System Engineering from Ohio University, and a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Northwestern University. His teaching interests include simulation, applied probability, and queueing theory. His consulting and funded research activities have involved modeling and simulation within manufacturing, transportation, and biological contexts. He has received several teaching awards, published papers in applied probability and queueing theory, and co-authored four books.