Convergence and Measurement of Inter-Departure Processes in a Pull Serial Line: Entropy and Augmented Lagrange Multiplier Approach

In this study, we consider infinite supply of raw materials and backlogged demands as given two boundary conditions. And we need not make any specific assumptions about the inter-arrival of external demand and service time distributions. We propose a numeric model and an algorithm in order to compute the first two moments of inter-departure process. Entropy enables us to examine the convergence of this process and to derive measurable relations of this process. Also, lower bound on the variance of inter-departure process plays an important role in proving the existence and uniqueness of an optimal solution for a numeric model and deriving the convergence order of augmented Lagrange multipliers method applied to a numeric model. Through these works, we confirm some structural properties and numeric examples how the validity and applicability of our study.