An analytical method for the performance evaluation of echelon kanban control systems

We develop a general purpose analytical approximation method for the performance evaluation of a multi-stage, serial, echelon kanban control system. The basic principle of the method is to decompose the original system into a set of nested subsystems, each subsystem being associated with a particular echelon of stages. Each subsystem is analyzed in isolation using a product-form approximation technique. An iterative procedure is used to determine the unknown parameters of each subsystem. Numerical results show that the method is fairly accurate. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]