Manufacturing Systems Analysis
Manufacturing systems analysis from MIT OpenCourseWare covers how factories and production lines are modeled and evaluated. Topics include transfer lines and flexible manufacturing systems, calculation of performance measures such as throughput, in-process inventory, and meeting production commitments, real-time control of scheduling, and the effects of machine failures, set-ups, and other disruptions on system performance. The course draws on queueing theory and stochastic modeling to analyze how these systems behave under uncertainty. Materials include MIT lecture notes, problem sets, and course readings made available through OpenCourseWare, following MIT's mechanical engineering curriculum. No certificate is offered, and there is no cost to access any of the materials. The course suits students or engineers wanting a rigorous, quantitative grounding in production system design and control.