The purpose of this course is to expose students to novel and computationally efficient methods for analysis, design, and improvement of smart production systems in large volume manufacturing. The emphasis is the rigorous engineering study of practical issues related to parts flow in production systems with unreliable machines and finite buffers. The course material is based on long time industrial studies and experiences by the instructor and his colleagues in various manufacturing plants. Every problem considered in this course is originated on the factory floor and, after appropriate conceptualization and analysis, ended up as an application on the factory floor; the case studies included in this course describe some of these applications. 

The topics include: Computationally efficient methods for analysis of production systems, designing lean in-process and finished goods buffering, and selecting carriers carriers in closed loop systems; Digitalization methods for identification, monitoring, and elimination of production system bottlenecks; Analytical methods for satisfying product quality requirement and customer demand in production systems; Smart analysis of transient behavior of production system; and system-theoretic properties of production lines. These topics will be addressed in the framework of stochastic models of production systems.