Efficient decomposition methods for the analysis of multi-facility blocking models

Abstract

Three new decomposition methods are developed for the exact analysis of stochastic multi-facility blocking models of the product-form type. The first is a basic decomposition algorithm that reduces the analysis of blocking probabilities to that of two separate subsystems. The second is a generalized M-subsystem decomposition method. The third is a more elaborate and efficient incremental decomposition technique. All of the algorithms exploit the sparsity of locality that can be found in the demand matrix of a system. By reducing the analysis to that of a set of subsystems, the overall dimensionality of the problem is diminished and the computational requirements are reduced significantly. This enables the efficient computation of blocking probabilities in large systems. Several numerical examples are provided to illustrate the computational savings that can be realized.