Discrete Event Dyn Syst (2011) 21:1–10 DOI 10.1007/s10626-010-0095-2 Receding horizon control of mixed line flow shop systems Kagan Gokbayrak Received: 17 November 2009 / Accepted: 29 October 2010 / Published online: 12 November 2010 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 Abstract We consider reliable mixed line flow shop systems that are composed of controllable and uncontrollable machines. These systems are assumed to receive arrivals at random instants and process jobs deterministically in the order of arrival so as to depart them before their deadlines that are revealed at the time of arrival. We model these flow shops as serial networks of queues operating under a non- preemptive first-come-first-served policy. Defining completion-time costs for jobs and process costs at controllable machines, a stochastic convex optimization problem is formulated where the control variables are the constrained service times of jobs at the controllable machines. As an on-line solution method to determine these service times, we propose a receding horizon controller, which solves a deterministic problem at each decision instant. We quantify the available future information by the look-ahead window size. Numerical examples demonstrate the value of information and that the no-waiting property of the full-information case is not observed in the partial-information case. Keywords Manufacturing · Queueing systems · Receding horizon control · Controllable service times · Value of information 1 Introduction We consider reliable manufacturing flow shop systems composed of CNC (Computer Numerical Control) and conventional machines. Job arrivals occur at random times with possibly nonstationary interarrival time distributions. The service times at machines, however, are deterministic, and jobs are processed in the order they arrive; therefore, we model these systems as serial networks of G/D/1 queues K. Gokbayrak (B ) Department of Industrial Engineering, Bilkent University, Ankara, 06800, Turkey e-mail: kgokbayr@bilkent.edu.tr