SELF-BUFFERING, SELF-BALANCING, SELF-FLUSHING PRODUCTION LINES

This research addresses a system of flexible worker assignments in a s etting where there are more workers than machines. When organized usin g this system, a production line balances itself by shifting the workl oads continuously and automatically in response to changes in the stat e of the system. The system is, in effect, buffering itself against va riation by altering the work assignments on the fly. This allows the s ystem to operate with very low levels of work-in-process inventory (WI P). In this paper, the workers (rather than machines) are the factor t hat limits the rate of output. We also assume that the line has a ''U' ' shape, but many of the results do not depend on this topology. An in dustrial example is described. The system has some interesting and cou nter-intuitive properties which we demonstrate under a variety of circ umstances through an exploratory approach that uses both Markovian and simulation models. Several different policies are compared under cond itions of processing time uncertainty. We demonstrate that a flexible assignment system can outperform fixed assignments in a variety of cir cumstances. Of particular interest is the near absence of balance dela y, even when the tasks cannot be divided equally among the workers.