Nested Fork-Join Queuing Networks and Their Application to Mobility Airfield Operations Analysis

A single-chain nested fork-join queuing network (FJQN) model of mobility airfield ground processing is proposed. In order to analyze the queuing network model, advances on two fronts are made. First, a general technique for decomposing nested FJQNs with probabilistic forks is proposed, which consists of incorporating feedback loops into the embedded Markov chain of the synchronization station, then using Marie\u27s Method to decompose the network. Numerical studies show this strategy to be effective, with less than two percent relative error in the approximate performance measures in most realistic cases. The second contribution is the identification of a quick, efficient method for solving for the stationary probabilities of the λn/Ck/r/N queue. Unpreconditioned Conjugate Gradient Squared is shown to be the method of choice in the context of decomposition using Marie\u27s Method, thus broadening the class of networks where the method is of practical use. The mobility airfield model is analyzed using the strategies described above, and accurate approximations of airfield performance measures are obtained in a fraction of the time needed for a simulation study. The proposed airfield modeling approach is especially effective for quick-look studies and sensitivity analysis

Numerical methods for queues with shared service

A queueing system is a mathematical abstraction of a situation where elements, called customers, arrive in a system and wait until they receive some kind of service. Queueing systems are omnipresent in real life. Prime examples include people waiting at a counter to be served, airplanes waiting to take off, traffic jams during rush hour etc. Queueing theory is the mathematical study of queueing phenomena. As often neither the arrival instants of the customers nor their service times are known in advance, queueing theory most often assumes that these processes are random variables. The queueing process itself is then a stochastic process and most often also a Markov process, provided a proper description of the state of the queueing process is introduced. This dissertation investigates numerical methods for a particular type of Markovian queueing systems, namely queueing systems with shared service. These queueing systems differ from traditional queueing systems in that there is simultaneous service of the head-of-line customers of all queues and in that there is no service if there are no customers in one of the queues. The absence of service whenever one of the queues is empty yields particular dynamics which are not found in traditional queueing systems. These queueing systems with shared service are not only beautiful mathematical objects in their own right, but are also motivated by an extensive range of applications. The original motivation for studying queueing systems with shared service came from a particular process in inventory management called kitting. A kitting process collects the necessary parts for an end product in a box prior to sending it to the assembly area. The parts and their inventories being the customers and queues, we get ``shared service'' as kitting cannot proceed if some parts are absent. Still in the area of inventory management, the decoupling inventory of a hybrid make-to-stock/make-to-order system exhibits shared service. The production process prior to the decoupling inventory is make-to-stock and driven by demand forecasts. In contrast, the production process after the decoupling inventory is make-to-order and driven by actual demand as items from the decoupling inventory are customised according to customer specifications. At the decoupling point, the decoupling inventory is complemented with a queue of outstanding orders. As customisation only starts when the decoupling inventory is nonempty and there is at least one order, there is again shared service. Moving to applications in telecommunications, shared service applies to energy harvesting sensor nodes. Such a sensor node scavenges energy from its environment to meet its energy expenditure or to prolong its lifetime. A rechargeable battery operates very much like a queue, customers being discretised as chunks of energy. As a sensor node requires both sensed data and energy for transmission, shared service can again be identified. In the Markovian framework, "solving" a queueing system corresponds to finding the steady-state solution of the Markov process that describes the queueing system at hand. Indeed, most performance measures of interest of the queueing system can be expressed in terms of the steady-state solution of the underlying Markov process. For a finite ergodic Markov process, the steady-state solution is the unique solution of $N-1$ balance equations complemented with the normalisation condition, $N$ being the size of the state space. For the queueing systems with shared service, the size of the state space of the Markov processes grows exponentially with the number of queues involved. Hence, even if only a moderate number of queues are considered, the size of the state space is huge. This is the state-space explosion problem. As direct solution methods for such Markov processes are computationally infeasible, this dissertation aims at exploiting structural properties of the Markov processes, as to speed up computation of the steady-state solution. The first property that can be exploited is sparsity of the generator matrix of the Markov process. Indeed, the number of events that can occur in any state --- or equivalently, the number of transitions to other states --- is far smaller than the size of the state space. This means that the generator matrix of the Markov process is mainly filled with zeroes. Iterative methods for sparse linear systems --- in particular the Krylov subspace solver GMRES --- were found to be computationally efficient for studying kitting processes only if the number of queues is limited. For more queues (or a larger state space), the methods cannot calculate the steady-state performance measures sufficiently fast. The applications related to the decoupling inventory and the energy harvesting sensor node involve only two queues. In this case, the generator matrix exhibits a homogene block-tridiagonal structure. Such Markov processes can be solved efficiently by means of matrix-geometric methods, both in the case that the process has finite size and --- even more efficiently --- in the case that it has an infinite size and a finite block size. Neither of the former exact solution methods allows for investigating systems with many queues. Therefore we developed an approximate numerical solution method, based on Maclaurin series expansions. Rather than focussing on structural properties of the Markov process for any parameter setting, the series expansion technique exploits structural properties of the Markov process when some parameter is sent to zero. For the queues with shared exponential service and the service rate sent to zero, the resulting process has a single absorbing state and the states can be ordered such that the generator matrix is upper-diagonal. In this case, the solution at zero is trivial and the calculation of the higher order terms in the series expansion around zero has a computational complexity proportional to the size of the state space. This is a case of regular perturbation of the parameter and contrasts to singular perturbation which is applied when the service times of the kitting process are phase-type distributed. For singular perturbation, the Markov process has no unique steady-state solution when the parameter is sent to zero. However, similar techniques still apply, albeit at a higher computational cost. Finally we note that the numerical series expansion technique is not limited to evaluating queues with shared service. Resembling shared queueing systems in that a Markov process with multidimensional state space is considered, it is shown that the regular series expansion technique can be applied on an epidemic model for opinion propagation in a social network. Interestingly, we find that the series expansion technique complements the usual fluid approach of the epidemic literature

Characterising Enterprise Application Integration Solutions as Discrete-Event Systems

It is not difficult to find an enterprise which has a software ecosystem composed of applications that were built using different technologies, data models, operating systems, and most often were not designed to exchange data and share functionalities. Enterprise Application Integration provides methodologies and tools to design and implement integration solutions. The state-of-the-art integration technologies provide a domain-specific language that enables the design of conceptual models for integration solutions. The analysis of integration solutions to predict their behaviour and find possible performance bottlenecks is an important activity that contributes to increase the quality of the delivered solutions, however, software engineers follow a costly, risky, and time-consuming approach. Integration solutions shall be understood as a discrete-event system. This chapter introduces a new approach based on simulation to take advantage of well-established techniques and tools for discrete-event simulation, cutting down cost, risk, and time to deliver better integration solutions

The effect of intermittent forgetting upon learning and productivity within production systems.

This dissertation addresses the effects of intermittent forgetting upon the learning and industrial production process. This work can apply to any process in which learning must occur and may re-occur at a later point in time following a break. Learning occurs whenever a new endeavor is accepted and continues through the life cycle of that endeavor. During the learning process and during breaks away from the learned information, forgetting occurs unless action is taken to preclude it. Through the use of simulation, this document demonstrates the effects of intermittent forgetting upon learning, productivity and overall performance using a resolution function when the time of occurrence and the duration of forgetting are predicted using a simulated queue. The resulting, simulated queues provide the times at which intermittent forgetting is initiated and the duration of forgetting. Accounting for the reduced overall rate of learning, forgetting is understood even less than learning, yet it cannot be ignored when planning the production schedule or constructing bids within a manufacturing environment. This work begins with a review of the latest findings affecting learning and forgetting, and includes the models to describe these processes. A C++ program was then run to generate the queues and compute the result upon overall learning and relearning following production breaks. The model used was multivariate using units produced and times as means to measure productivity. The model reviewed four situations: (1) No Forgetting, (2) Minimal Intermittent Forgetting, (3) High Intermittent Forgetting, (4) Continuous Forgetting. It was demonstrated that with a reasonable model to describe the learning and forgetting processes, an impact due to intermittent forgetting can be predicted and subsequently minimized. People cannot operate at peak levels continuously and it is at those times when humans are vulnerable to forgetting. Also, when not engaged within the learned activity for a period of time, the more complex aspects of the activity will be less likely to be recalled without help. This occurs in industry when production breaks occur and in all activities in which learning new information is required but will not be utilized continuously. Generally, the longer the break between the use of information, the more difficult it is to recall. This excludes those instances when during brief breaks a portion of the cognitive process may continue and actual learning, not forgetting, continues.The results of the study showed that a significant portion of resultant learning (15--20 percent) can be affected by intermittent forgetting during a cyclic production process. It is clear that the various types of learning that occur within a production environment must be analyzed independently in order to determine a means to minimize forgetting impacts. This is due to the occurrence of three types of activities occurring simultaneously: worker learning, organizational learning, and process improvement. Forgetting applies primarily to the human element, assuming that organizational learning and process improvements are documented and not lost nor difficult to retrieve. The results of this study apply in the academic world as well as the industrial world wherever forgetting is taking place which can hamper the overall learning process

Advanced data management system analysis techniques study

The state of the art of system analysis is reviewed, emphasizing data management. Analytic, hardware, and software techniques are described

Techniques for the Fast Simulation of Models of Highly dependable Systems

With the ever-increasing complexity and requirements of highly dependable systems, their evaluation during design and operation is becoming more crucial. Realistic models of such systems are often not amenable to analysis using conventional analytic or numerical methods. Therefore, analysts and designers turn to simulation to evaluate these models. However, accurate estimation of dependability measures of these models requires that the simulation frequently observes system failures, which are rare events in highly dependable systems. This renders ordinary Simulation impractical for evaluating such systems. To overcome this problem, simulation techniques based on importance sampling have been developed, and are very effective in certain settings. When importance sampling works well, simulation run lengths can be reduced by several orders of magnitude when estimating transient as well as steady-state dependability measures. This paper reviews some of the importance-sampling techniques that have been developed in recent years to estimate dependability measures efficiently in Markov and nonMarkov models of highly dependable system

A Simple, Practical Prioritization Scheme for a Job Shop Processing Multiple Job Types

The maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) process is used to recondition equipment in the railroad, off-shore drilling, aircraft, and shipping industries. In the typical MRO process, the equipment is disassembled into component parts and these parts are routed to back-shops for repair. Repaired parts are returned for reassembling the equipment. Scheduling the back-shop for smooth flow often requires prioritizing the repair of component parts from different original assemblies at different machines. To enable such prioritization, we model the back-shop as a multi-class queueing network with a ConWIP execution system and introduce a new priority scheme to maximize the system performance. In this scheme, we identify the bottleneck machine based on overall workload and classify machines into two categories: the bottleneck machine and the non-bottleneck machine(s). Assemblies with the lowest cycle time receive the highest priority on the bottleneck machine and the lowest priority on non-bottleneck machine(s). Our experimental results show that this priority scheme increases the system performance by lowering the average cycle times without adversely impacting the total throughput. The contribution of this thesis consists primarily of three parts. First, we develop a simple priority scheme for multi-class, multi-server, ConWIP queueing systems with the disassembly/reassembly feature so that schedulers for a job-shop environment would be able to know which part should be given priority, in what order and where. Next, we provide an exact analytical solution to a two-class, two-server closed queueing model with mixed non-preemptive priority scheme. The queueing network model we study has not been analyzed in the literature, and there are no existing models that address the underlying problem of deciding prioritization by job types to maximize the system performance. Finally, we explore conditions under which the non-preemptive priority discipline can be approximated by a preemptive priority discipline