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IJQRM
31,8
938
Received 16 May 2012
Accepted 27 March 2014
International Journal of Quality &
Reliability Management
Vol. 31 No. 8, 2014
pp. 938-949
r Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0265-671X
DOI 10.1108/IJQRM-05-2012-0065
RELIABILITY PAPER
A model for reliability analysis of
multi-state manufacturing systems
Seyed Ahmad Niknam and Rapinder Sawhney
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Tennessee,
Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the reliability analysis of a multi-state
manufacturing system with different performance levels. In, fact, reliability assessment of manufacturing
systems gives a reasonable demonstration of system performance.
Design/methodology/approach This research utilizes a multi-state system reliability analysis to
develop a new metric for evaluating production systems.
Findings The proposed model provides a sensible measure to assess the system situation against
the best-case scenario of a production line.
Originality/value The proposed model incorporates not only failures that stop production but also
deals with partial failures where the system continues to operate at reduced performance rates.
The analyses are represented in a best-case vs worst-case situation. Each of these cases provides
insight for managers with respect to planning operation and maintenance activities.
Keywords Reliability analysis, Manufacturing system, Multi-state system, Workstation
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
A manufacturing system (MS) consists of a series of operations and actions to change
the shape, size, or properties of materials into final products. As shown in Figure 1,
the main components of a MS include labor/personnel, equipment (machines and
tools), material (raw martial and consumables), and planning/scheduling (Sawhney
et al., 2010).
The major goal of a MS is to meet the customer demands by producing non-defective
products. The performance of a MS is normally considered with respect to the quantity of
production. Examples of production metrics are throughput and work-in-process. However,
there are no specific reliability-based measures for MS. The reliability of a MS may be
defined as the probability that such system will perform the required function under stated
condition for a stated period of time. The objective of this research is to investigate the
reliability analysis of repairable MS. This research utilizes multi-state system (MSS)
reliability analysis to develop a new metric for evaluating production systems.
The concept of MSS, introduced in 1970s, refers to a system with a finite number of
performance rates. In essence, system efficiency is a function of the performance rates
of the systems elements, which may vary due to deterioration or variable ambient
conditions. The simplest case of a MSS is a binary system in which only two distinctive
states of the system, namely perfect functionality or complete failure, are considered.
The concept of MSS deals with partial failures where the system continues to operate
at reduced performance rates.
In this study, the performance rates associated with the number of available
machines in each workstation are considered. Each workstation contains one or more
identical machines that perform certain manufacturing processes such as forming,
cutting, or joining. In other words, the equipments are arranged based on type Multi-state
and function (Groover, 2000). The probability of success in such systems is simply the manufacturing
product of individual probabilities of success in each workstation. However, this
approach does not provide any measure for evaluating the production system when it systems
fails to operate on demand.

2. Literature review 939

Performance evaluation of a MS in terms of process reliability has not been extensively
considered in the literature. A brief review of relevant literature would give readers an
insight view on various applications of reliability methods in manufacturing processes
and systems.
Chen and Jin (2005) proposed a general quality-reliability chain modeling for system
reliability analysis in a multi-station manufacturing process. This study emphasizes
the importance of product quality of upstream stations on the MS component reliability
of the downstream stations. The study aimed at integrating the MS component
reliability and product quality.
Sawhney et al. (2010) integrated lean principles and reliability models through
a modified failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) to systematically improve the
reliability of lean systems. The proposed risk assessment value provides an improved
ability to detect and control deviations. Zhang et al. (2009) focussed on the technology
of process FMEA while the objective was to advance the level of product reliability and
reduce process defects. The authors defined the process reliability as the ability of
process design avoiding defects. This study also presents the theory of randomicity,
which considers the effects of random characteristic of process factors on process
reliability.
Goel et al. (2000) focussed on reliability optimizations of large integrated chemical
process systems at conceptual design stage in order to achieve higher availability
level. Considering the inflexibility of traditional methods to reconfigure a process, the
authors proposed an optimization framework that combines the reliability and
process synthesis challenges. Standard fault tree analysis and FMEA methodologies
was combined with dynamic analysis by Radi and Elhami (2007) for the purpose of
reliability improvement in a die bonding process. In this work, instead of using statistical
data analysis, process dynamics was used to determine critical events. A quick and
cost-effective process reliability monitoring technique, known as FWLR (fast wafer level
reliability) is presented by Yap et al. (2001). FWLR provides intrinsic reliability
information through highly accelerated stress tests.

Equipment
Labor
Planning and Control

Figure 1.
Starting Manufacturing System Finished A typical manufacturing
Material Product system with a
WS1 WS2 WSn finite number of
workstations (WS)
IJQRM Kusiak and Zakarian (1996) studied the techniques for reliability evaluation
31,8 of integration definition (IDEF) methodology that is popular for modeling of
various processes. IDEF describes critical activities (functions) at various levels.
This work introduces the path tree algorithm to recognize minimal path and
cut sets of a reliability graph. Li and Zuo (1999) provides a reliability approach to
analyze the failure risk of the contacts in mechanical structures in a metal forming
940 process. The presented approach is a combination of augmented lagrangian method
and response surface method. Sun et al. (2008) investigated the significance
of product quality and tool degradation for accurate estimation of machine-level
reliability. The system-level reliability was determined using the machine-level
reliability with various selected configurations. Das et al. (2007) optimized the
machine reliabilities through the selection of process plans for each part type in
cellular MS.

3. Production scenarios
This section introduces the common production metrics as well as the various
scenarios in production system.
The term throughput (TH) is applied to represent the average quantity of
non-defective parts produced per unit time in a MS. The throughput is always less or
equal to the bottleneck rate (rb), which refers to the workstation with highest long-term
utilization. Furthermore, cycle time (CT) is the time between release of the job at raw
material inventory until it reaches finished goods inventory. CT is a stochastic variable.
The minimum CT is called raw process time (T0) which is the summation of the
long-term average process times of all workstations including setup time and
material handling time. Therefore, the relation of CTXT0 is used in real situations.
The inventory within the MS, i.e. the inventory between the raw material inventory
and finished goods inventory is called work-in-process (WIP). Critical WIP (W0)
is the product of raw process time and bottleneck rate (W0 T0  rb). This WIP
belongs to a MS with no variability. Hopp and Spearman (2007) called this case as the
best-case scenario of a production line.
In this respect, the intended function of a MS with highest possible reliability
may be defined as achieving maximum TH with minimum CT. In other words, the
best-case law represents the highest reliability of a MS. It implies that a 100 percent
reliable MS retains the critical WIP level. On the other hand, there is a worst-case
scenario in which THworst 1/T0. In this study, zero TH is assumed as the total
failure for a MS. In general, best-case and worst-case scenarios are extreme cases.
To approximate the behavior of a real system we consider an intermediate case called
practical worst case (PWC) as shown in Figure 2. The PWC throughput and CT
are given by:

TH pwc w=W0 w  1r b

CT pwc T 0 w 1=r b

where w is a given WIP level.

The TH and CT of the PWC are always between those of the worst and best
case. According to Hopp and Spearman (2007), the system performance is acceptable
if the actual TH and CT of a MS fall between the PWC and best case plots.
 rb
Multi-state
manufacturing
systems
TH
Best
Practical
941
Worst

1/T0

Figure 2.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Practical worst case
WIP

Conversely, if CT and TH fall between PWC and worst-case plots, the MS is not
working properly.

4. Model for reliability analysis of multi-state manufacturing system

(MSMS)
In this research, each workstation is an element of the MS. Even the material handling
systems can be regarded as a workstation in this type of modeling. It is assumed that
all the parts have a same routing. The number of machines in each workstation is not a
major concern in this work. Instead, the ability of each workstation to perform the
required tasks is significant.
Each workstation j has K different states. Hence, gji represents the performance
rate of element j in the state i. It should be emphasized that the performance
rate G j (t) of workstation j in the state i is the throughput of that workstation
at any instant tX0. In general, throughput is a single-value discrete random variable.
Thus, the set:

gj fgj1 ; gj2 ; :::; gjk g

corresponds to performance rates or throughputs of workstation j. Each performance

rate has a probability to occur. The set:

Pj t fpj1 t; pj2 t; :::; pjk tg

where:

Pji t PrfGj gji tg; i 2 f1; :::kg

represents the probabilities related to various states of the workstation j. The concept
of relative frequency can be utilized to determine the probability of each functional
state. In this way, for n hours of production, the state A of workstation j occurs nA
times. Therefore the probability of state A is:

nA
PA lim
n
n!1
IJQRM It is to be noted that different states of workstation j are mutually exclusive events and
31,8 therefore:
X
k
Pji t 1; 8t : 0ptpT
i1

942 where T is the operation period of MS, i.e. raw process time. It should be clear that the
performance rates of each workstation contribute to the performance rate of the entire
MS. For a system with n elements, the possible combinations of systems performance
rate is a n-dimension space in the form of:

Ln fj11 ; :::; j1k g  :::  fjn1 ; jn2 ; ::::jnk g

Ln can be classified into two subsets; acceptable and unacceptable system functioning.
It is evident that unacceptable states represent the failure of system. Therefore, reliable
system should be able to stay in the acceptable states. A MSMS has K different states
and the entire system performance rate in state i is a random variable gi. Accordingly,
at time tX0, the set:

M fg1 ; g2 ; :::; gK g

involves the possible performance rate of the MSMS (Lisnianski, 2007; Lisnianski et al.,
2010). The MSMS structure function is the transform function that maps Ln to M.
The structure function may be represented in a table or in analytical form. Hence, the
generic MSMS model contains the performance stochastic processes G j (t) for each
element of the system and the system structure function is:

Gtf G1 t; . . . ; Gn t

This model determines the stochastic process, i.e. system output performance G(t). It is
important to note that changes in state of any workstation may cause change in the
entire system state when there is no changes in the states of the remaining
workstations. In the domain of MSS, this element is called relevant. In fact, the relevant
workstation in our case is the bottleneck workstation.
In addition, the demand W(t) determines the acceptable system states. The acceptability
function F(G(t),W(t)) establishes the relation between the system performance and the
demand. For most cases the production (i.e. TH) should be more or equal to the amount of
demand. Therefore, the acceptability function will be in the form of:

FGt; W t Gt  W tX0

Figure 3 shows a typical graph of demand vs TH. Here, the reliability indices of interest are
as follows: time to failure, time between failures, and number of failures in a shift period.
The failure is when TH does not satisfy the level of demand. In principle, seasonal
demand would be a reason for change in demand level. In this research, the reliability
models of MSMS are studied based on Markov processes. There are two main
assumptions in reliability analysis using homogeneous Markov processes: first, time to
failure and time to repair follow exponential distribution, second, number of failures
can be described by Poisson process.
 TH Demand Multi-state
0.3 manufacturing
TH & Demand 0.25 systems
0.2

0.15 943
0.1

0.05
Figure 3.
0 Demand vs TH
TIME

In this work, continuous-time Markov chain is considered where at any time the transition
from one state to another may occur. Figure 4 shows a typical state-transition diagram
for a repairable element subject to minor and major failures and repairs (Lisnianski et al.,
2010). The relevant definitions, equations, and properties of continuous-time Markov
chains can be found in Lisnianski (2007) and Lisnianski et al. (2010). The transition
probabilities along with the initial probability vector determine the probabilistic behavior
of a continuous-time Markov chain.

k 1,k k,k 1

k 1
 2,k k,2

k 2,k 1 k 1,k 2

1,k k,1
... ...

 2,3 3,2

 1,k 1 k 1,1
2

 1,2 2,1

1
Figure 4.
State-transition diagrams
Source: Lisnianski et al. (2010)
IJQRM It is important to note that we only consider those state probabilities that are not
31,8 dependent on states occupied in the past. The state probabilities of a repairable
element subject to minor and major failures and repairs can be calculated through the
following system of differential equations (Lisnianski et al., 2010):
8
kP
1 kP
1
>
>
> dPdtk t
> me;k Pe t  Pk t lk;e
944 >
>
> e1 e1
>
> Pk iP
1 iP
1 Pk
< dPi t
dt le;i Pe t me;i Pe t  Pi tfg li;e me;i
>
>
ei1 e1 e1 ei1
> i 2; 3; :::; k  1
>
>
>
> dP1 t P
> k Pk
>
: dt le;1 Pe t  P1 t m1;e
e2 e2

In this set of equations, l and m represent the failure rate and repair rate respectively.
Both l and m are time-independent and can be expressed as:

l MTBF 1
m MTTR1

where MTBF stands for mean time between failure and MTTR is the mean time to
repair. Under the assumption that the process initiates from the best state k the initial
conditions are as follows:

Pk 0 1; Pk1 0 Pk2 0 :::: P1 0 0

To clarify the proposed reliability analysis, the next section presents a numerical
example of a MS with four workstations. In essence, a simulation model would be on
interest in this respect which will be considered in future research.

5. Numerical example
The proposed example is based on defining the states of each workstation according
to the available machines. Table I shows the characteristics of the proposed MSMS.
If m is the number of machines in each workstation, then the number of states would
be m 1. Hence, for a state with one machine we have a binary system, i.e. the machine
is working or the machine is out of order and there is no production in the workstation.
In this way, a workstation with three machines has the following states: {0 1 2 3}
which are the number of machines working. Here, 0 is complete failure of workstation,
1 and 2 are the partial failure modes and 3 is the state of full functioning.

WS No. machines Process time (hour) TH (part/hour)

1 2 5 0.4
2 2 8 0.25
Table I. 3 3 10 0.3
MSMS characteristics 4 1 2 0.5
There are total of eight machines in the system in four workstations. Accordingly, the Multi-state
system will have 72 states: manufacturing
Y4
systems
m 1i
i1

Table II provides a number of possible states and the corresponding throughput. 945
It is assumed that if a workstation fails (state of 0) the output performance G(t) f
(G1(t), y, Gn(t)) will be also 0, i.e. totally failed system. For other possible states, the
output performance will be a function of the workstation with the smallest amount of
TH. For instance, when only one machine available at WS3 and other workstations
have perfect functionality, the TH is 1/10 where the denominator is the process time
in WS3.
This TH is the smallest possible TH, and therefore, it is represented by 1 as the
output performance. When perfect functionality is happening for all workstations,
the TH is equal to the bottleneck rate and the output performance is 4. Hence, the
possible performance levels in terms of TH are as follows:

g 1 0:1; g2 0:125; g 3 0:2; g 4 0:25

The codes developed in MATLAB solved the relevant system of differential equations
in order to find the state probabilities. To simplify the problem, it is possible to assume
constant demand of w 0.2 (parts/min). Furthermore, the following failure rates and
repair rates are assumed for this example:

l4;3 7:9  103 hour1 ; l4;2 6:8  103 hour1

l4;1 5:7  103 hour1 ; l3;2 4:5  103 hour1
l3;1 3:4  103 hour1 ; l2;1 2:2  103 hour1

m3;4 2:2  102 hour1 ; m2;4 9:1  103 hour1

m1;2 1:7  102 hour1 ; m1;4 1:3  102 hour1
m2;3 2:0  102 hour1 ; m1;3 1:1  102 hour1

G1(t) G2(t) G3(t) G4(t) f(G1(t), y, Gn(t)) TH

0 0 0 0 0 0
2 2 0 1 0 0
2 2 3 0 0 0
1 1 1 1 1 0.1
1 1 2 1 2 0.125
1 1 3 1 2 0.125
2 1 1 1 1 0.1
2 1 2 1 2 0.125
2 1 3 1 2 0.125
2 2 1 1 1 0.1
2 2 2 1 3 0.2 Table II.
2 2 3 1 4 0.25 MSMS characteristic
IJQRM The initial conditions with the assumption that the initial state is the best state are
31,8 as follows:

p4 0 1; p3 0 1; p2 0 1; p1 0 1

The common MSS reliability indices include instantaneous expected performance,

946 and instantaneous performance deficiency. The mean performance values represent
the system performance where the system stays in acceptable states. For this index, all
the four states are considered as acceptable. The deficiency refers to a situation where
the accumulated demand in interval [0,T] is greater than the accumulated performance.
For a constant demand, the element mean instantaneous performance and the mean
instantaneous performance deficiency are shown in Figure 5 for a period of 200 hours.
It is clear that the mean performance will be close to 0.2 in long-term production.
One approach to consider the system reliability is to consider states 1 and 2 as
absorbing states since the performance rates associated to these states are lower than
the demand. In other words, it is assumed that state 3 is the PWC, and therefore,
states 3 and 4 are acceptable. It implies that all the repairs that return the element from
absorbing states back to the acceptable states are cancelled (i.e. m2,4 m1,4
m2,3 m1,3 0). Figure 6 presents the reliability function under the above-
mentioned assumptions.
As mentioned earlier, the element reliability function of the worst-case scenario
is of interest. For this, an additional Markov model was developed which only
considers state 1 as the absorbing state. State 1 in this example represents the worst-
case scenario.
Figure 7 presents the corresponding reliability function. Hence, it is evident that
in 200 hours the reliability of MS, which stays in the worst case, drops to 0.3778.
The numerical example can be extended by manipulating the failure rates and repair
rates in order to improve or worsen the performance. In this way, the failure rates were
doubled and repair rates were decreased by 50 percent to worsen the system
performance. Figure 8 shows the corresponding performance deficiency. To reduce the
complexity of such analysis, it is reasonable to presume a finite number of performance
rates for the MS.
The reliability of worst-case scenario in this case is around 0.22. For the improved
case, the failure rates were decreased by 50 percent and repair rates were increased by
50 percent. Figure 9 shows the corresponding performance deficiency. The reliability of
worst-case scenario in this case is around 0.58.
0.25 0.03
Instantaneous mean performance

0.24 0.025
Performance deficiency

0.23 0.02

0.22 0.015

0.21 0.01

0.2 0.005

Figure 5. 0.19 0
Reliability indices 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
Time (Hours) Time (Hours)
 Reliability of the system where state 1 and 2 Multi-state
are not acceptable
1 manufacturing
0.9
systems
0.8

0.7 947
Reliability

0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
Time (Hours) Figure 6.
Reliability function
Note: State 3 and 4 are acceptable

0.9
Reliability of worst case scenario

0.8

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.4
Figure 7.
Reliability function of
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 the worst case scenario
Time (Hours)

6. Conclusions
This research investigates the reliability analysis of a MSMS with different performance
levels. In, fact, reliability assessment of MS gives a reasonable demonstration of system
performance. The proposed model provides a sensible measure to assess the system
situation against the best-case scenario of a production line.
In essence, reliability assessment is an iterative process that helps to discover the
ways for reliability improvements and it is a probabilistic treatment of system failures.
Thus, having a measure in hands against the ideal case would be helpful for managers
IJQRM 0.06

31,8
0.05

Performance deficiency
0.04

948
0.03

0.02

0.01
Figure 8.
Performance deficiency
(impaired failure 0
rates and repair rates) 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
Time (Hours)

0.012

0.01
Performance deficiency

0.008

0.006

0.004

0.002
Figure 9.
Performance deficiency
(improved failure rates 0
and repair rates) 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
Time(Hours)

to plan the production system. The results of the numerical example confirm the
usefulness of the proposed reliability indices for system evaluation. A simulation
model will be developed in the future research in order to generalize this analysis.
Also varying demand and other significant measures of production (e.g. WIP) will be
taken into account in future study.

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About the authors

Seyed Ahmad Niknam is a Graduate Research Assistant in the Department of Industrial and
Systems Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Seyed Ahmad Niknam is the
corresponding author and can be contacted at: sniknam@utk.edu
Dr Rapinder Sawhney, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems
Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

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