Heuristics for selecting machine types and determining buffer capacities in assembly/disassembly systems

We deal with a design problem of assembly/disassembly (AD) systems with finite buffer capacities where the times between failures, the times to repair, and the processing times are exponentially distributed with different parameter values. We present a solution procedure for finding the minimum cost configuration which achieves a desired throughput rate for an AD system. The configuration is defined by the types of machines to be used and capacities of buffers in the AD system. Results of computational experiments on randomly generated test problems show that the proposed heuristics give relatively good configurations in a reasonable amount of time.