An Analytical Approach to Cycle Time Evaluation in an Unreliable Multi-Product Production Line with Finite Buffers

This thesis develops an analytical approximation method to measure the performance of a multi-product unreliable production line with finite buffers between workstations. The performance measure used in this thesis is Total Cycle Time. The proposed approximation method generalizes the processing times to relax the variation of product types in a multi-product system. A decomposition method is then employed to approximate the production rate of a multi-product production line. The decomposition method considers generally distributed processing times as well as random failure and repair. A GI/G/1/N queuing model is also applied to obtain parameters such as blocking and starving probabilities that are needed for the approximation procedure. Several numerical experiments under different scenarios are performed, and results are validated by simulation models in order to assess the accuracy and strength of the approximation method. Consequent analysis and discussion of the results is also presented

A Two-Stage Stochastic Model for Maintenance and Rehabilitation Planning of Pavements

Pavement maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R) plan for maintaining the pavement quality in an acceptable level has direct influence on the required budget. Deterministic budgeting is an unrealistic assumption, so, in this study, a two-stage stochastic model using integer programming is developed to address uncertainty in budgeting. Another aim of this study is to develop an executive model that considers a broad range of parameters at network level maintenance and rehabilitation planning. While having too many details in planning problems makes them more complicated, some restrictions called “technical constraints” were considered to reduce solution time of solving procedure as well as improve M&R activities assignment efficiency. Comparing results of the stochastic model with a deterministic model for a case study revealed that the two-stage stochastic model led to increased total cost compared to the deterministic one due to considering probability in budgeting. However, the developed model provides several M&R plans that are compatible with budget variation