PLAT – Production Lines Analysis Tool

This paper presents a software tool, called PLAT (Production Lines Analysis Tool), which computes exact stochastic solutions of models for reliable production lines. The user interface accepts the following parameters of serial production lines: the number of reliable stations (K), the service rate of each station (μi) and the buffer slots in front of each station (Bi). In the case of a transient solution, the analyst inputs the initial state of the specified production line and the amount of time over which the transient solution is required. The solution method implemented consists of the generation of an equivalent Stochastic Automata Network (SAN) model, its conversion to a Kronecker representation, and the determination of the exact numerical solution through pre-existent SAN solvers (PEPS2007 and GTAEXPRESS). Transient and stationary probabilistic distributions of the system are developed to give various performance measures such as throughput, server utilization, average number of jobs and sojourn times.