Abstract
An important aspect of the efficient design of an automatic tranfer line is the ability to understand and predict the effects of the system parameters such as the size of the intermediate buffer storage space, the cycle times, failure times, repair times, on the production rate of a two-stage transfer line. In this paper we develop an efficient algorithm to compute the production rate of a two-stage transfer line for different system parameters. The algorithm is developed assuming that the failure and repair times are exponentially distributed. Using this algorithm, extensive numerical results are obtained. Based on these numerical results, the behavior of the transfer line is described and future researches is discussed.