This monograph contains some ofthe papers presented at a UK-Japanese Workshop on Stochastic Modelling in Innovative Manufacturing held at Churchill College, Cambridge on July 20 and 21st 1995, sponsored jointly by the UK Engineering and Physical Science Research Council and the British Council. Attending were 19 UK and 24 Japanese delegates representing 28 institutions. The aim of the workshop was to discuss the modelling work being done by researchers in both countries on the new activities and challenges occurring in manufacturing. These challenges have arisen because of the increasingly uncertain environment of modern manufacturing due to the commercial need to respond more quickly to customers demands, and the move to just-in-time manufacturing and flexible manufacturing systems and the increasing requirements for quality. As well as time pressure, the increasing importance of the quality of the products, the need to hold the minimum stock of components, and the importance of reliable production systems has meant that manufacturers need to design production systems that perform well in randomly varying conditions and that their operating procedures can respond to changes in conditions and requirements. This has increased the need to understand how manufacturing systems work in the random environments, and so emphasised the importance of stochastic models of such systems.

An Optimal Running Policy for Buffered Continuous Production Processes Subject to Random Breakdown.- On the Greedy Algorithm for Stochastic Optimization Problems.- Using Markov Decision Processes to Optimize a Nonlinear Functional of the Final Distribution, with Manufacturing Applications.- Stochastic Petri Net Model of an Ethernet-Based Manufacturing System.- Games of Production Development in Manufacturing.- Voting Procedure on Stopping Games of Markov Chain.- Risk and Return Analysis of a Multi-period Strategic Planning Problem.- Input/Output Backlog Control and Dynamic Capacity Planning in Versatile Manufacturing Companies.- Algorithms for Allocating Resources to Multi-stage Pharmaceutical Research Projects.- An Optimal Selection Problem on a Partially Observable Markov Chain.- Generalizing the Secretary Problem with Rank-dependent Rejection Probability.- Performance Evaluation of Nonparametric Age Replacement Methods - Survey and Comparison -.- Replacement Policies for a Shock Model with Two Kinds of Damage.- Stochastic Maintenance Modelling of High-tech Steel Production Plant.- An Optimal Maintenance Policy for a Deteriorating Server of an M/G/1 Queueing System.- Growth and Innovation through Reliability Testing.- Optimal Times of Burn-In Tests for Multilevel Assembly Lines.- Markovian Software Availability Modeling for Performance Evaluation.- Software Reliability Growth Models for Discrete and Incomplete Testing.- Zero-Failure Software Reliability Demonstration Testing Based on Kullback-Leibler Information.- A Study on Architectures of RAID Level 4 DiskArrays.- Simulation as a Means of Solving the Buffer Capacity Problem for Flow Line Production.- Inventory Control for Price Differentiable Products with No Carrying Over.- A Construction of SQC Intelligence System for Quick Registration and Retrieval Library - A Visualized SQC Report for Technical Wealth -.- On the Network Size for Neuro-based Stock Option Forecasting System: Experimental Evaluation.- Latent Structures of Goodness-of-invention.- Factor Analysis for Selected Observations.