Simulation of manufacturing system design for uncertain market conditions

This paper describes a model for technology acquisition to decide the technology and the size of investment in the face of uncertainties in product and technology evolution, and products' life cycles. Uncertainty in product mixes results from the stochastic product stream and overlapping of the life cycles, whereas uncertainty in the acceptable choices of technologies results from uncertainty in product mix and technological evolution. The level of technology is measured by the system's flexibility. A decision model based on Markov process has been developed and implemented on a moderate size problem.