Waiting line model applications in manufacturing

Improving manufacturing and attaining manufacturing excellence to gain competitive advantage has attracted a lot of attention in the last few years. Many manufacturing operations and many of the technological advances in manufacturing systems like FMS, AGVs, GT, CIM, cellular manufacturing, AS/RS and JIT production systems admit modelling via waiting line or queueing theory. In this paper, the literature available on the application of waiting line models in manufacturing is reviewed. Future research directions on waiting line model applications for improving the performance of the manufacturing are pointed out.