"First come, first served" can be unstable!

Abstract

Considers flexible manufacturing systems using the "first come, first served" (FCFS or FIFO) scheduling policy at each machine. The authors describe and discuss in some detail simple deterministic examples which have adequate capacity but which, under FCFS, can exhibit instability; unboundedly growing WIP taking the form of a repeated pattern of behavior with the repetitions on an increasing scale.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>