In this study we consider a CONWIP system in which the processing times at each station follow an exponential distribution and the demands for the finished Products arrive according to a compound Poisson process. The demands that are not satisfied instantaneously are assumed to be backordered. For this system we develop an approximation method to obtain the performance measures such as steady state probabilities of the number of parts at each station, the proportion of backordered demands, the average number of backordered demands and the mean waiting time of a backordered demand. For the analysis of the proposed CONWIP system, we model the CONWIP system as a closed queueing network with a synchronization station and analyze the closed queueing network using a product form approximation method. A matrix geometric method is used to solve the subnetwork in the application of the product-form approximation method. To test the accuracy of the approximation method, the results obtained from the approximation method were compared with those obtained by simulation. Comparisons with simulation have shown that the approximate method provides fairly good results.