The optimality of balancing workloads in certain types of flexible manufacturing systems (Q1066800)

Symmetric mathematical programming is used to analyze the optimality of balancing workloads to maximize the expected production in a single- server closed queuing network model of a flexible manufacturing system (FMS). In particular, using generalized concavity we prove that, even though the production function is not concave, balancing workloads maximizes the expected production in certain types of m-machine FMS's with n parts in the system. Our results are compared and contrasted with previous models of production systems.