Heuristics for allocation of reconfigurable resources in a serial line with reliability considerations

We consider the allocation of reconfigurable resources in a serial line with machine failures. Each station is equipped with non-idling dedicated servers while the whole system is equipped with a finite number of reconfigurable servers. The reconfigurable servers are available to be assigned to any station and all servers are allowed to collaborate on a single job. We provide conditions for a policy to achieve throughput optimality. We also show in the two-station case that transition monotone optimal policies exist. We discuss heuristics based on the two-server model that reduce average holding costs significantly. These heuristics are compared to several heuristics from the literature via a detailed numerical study.