Ordering of Tandem Constant-Service Stations to Minimize In-Process Stock Cost

Abstract

We study tandem ordering of constant-service stations with unlimited buffers where service at each station adds a certain value to the job. With the goal of minimizing the total expect value of the jobs in the system, we provide conditions under which some particular orderings are optimal and describe a heuristic that finds a near-optimal order for stations of arbitrary service lengths and added values.