6. International Conference on Analysis of Manufacturing Systems, Lunteren, The Netherlands, 193 – 198

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a framework of model elements and associated computation methods which are well suited to model information flow and physical processes in manufacturing systems. The proposed elements, the so called stochastic finite elements, are based on a discrete representation of time, in order to render distribution assumptions unnecessary. In our research, we extend available discrete time queueing models by models for batch processes, which are very common in manufacturing systems, when goods are transported or processed in some steps in batches and in some other steps piecewise. We give a short review of these models.