Reference no: EM131696574

Five identical machines operate independently in a small shop. Each machine is up (i.e., works) for between six and ten hours (uniformly distributed) and then breaks down. There are two repair technicians available, and it takes one technician between one and three hours (uniformly distributed) to fix a machine; only one technician can be assigned to work on a broken machine even if the other technician is idle. If more than two ma- chines are broken down at a given time, they form a (virtual) FIFO "repair" queue and wait for the first available technician, A technician works on a broken machine until it is fixed, regardless of what else is happening in the system. All uptimes and downtimes are independent of each other. Starting with all machines at the beginning of an "up" time, simulate this for 160 hours and observe the time-average number of machines that are (in repair or in queue for repair), as well as the utilization of the repair technicians as a group. Animate the machines when they're either undergoing repair or in queue for a repair technician, and plot the total number of machines down in repair plus in queue) TER over time. (HINT: Think of the machines as "customers" and the repair technicians as servers" and note that there are always five machines floating around in the model and they never leave.)