The three-station serial line is a fundamental building block of many
complex production systems. In this paper we develop methods for predi
cting the throughput of unbalanced three-station serial lines- We mode
l the variability of processing times using a variety of probability d
istributions that spans the range of variabilities encountered in prac
tice. We develop procedures for approximating throughput, for any allo
cation of total mean processing time, based on the throughput of a sma
ll number of easily analyzed cases.