Efficient computation of coordinating controls in hierarchical structures for failure-prone multi-cell flexible assembly systems

This paper concerns production allocation in multicell manufacturing systems. The production objective is to track a nonstationary demand as closely as possible when the demand is near or exceeds the capacity of the system. The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, a series of approximations are proposed to obtain a model that is realistic while admitting a tractable solution. Second, we derive a general result on the second-order finite-time (transient) statistics of a continuous-time Markov chain. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the proposed model and control methodology.