Performance modelling of dynamic network-based decision systems for distributed manufacturing

Printed circuit boards are customized devices that are frequently used in electronic products. To provide an appropriate choice for a proposed new product, it requires integrated design, supplier and manufacturing planning for modular components where suppliers and manufacturing resources are network distributed. The goal of this work is to develop a comprehensive model to support such enterprise-level decision-making in network-based scalable systems. To solve the model analytically, we propose a hyperexponential network traffic model to characterize the long-range dependence in the network communication. Modelling of evolutionary algorithms is based on stochastic models, which transform the execution of the algorithm into a stochastic activity net. The integration of the network traffic model with the evolutionary algorithm model is a key contribution of the paper. Petri nets are used to perform both the steady-state and transient analysis for the whole system. In this paper, we will show that the steady state for a typical distributed network is rarely achieved, suggesting that transient performance analysis is more important for this class of distributed decision problems.