CAPACITY PLANNING UNDER DIFFERENT INSPECTION STRATEGIES

This paper addresses the issue of location of inspection stations alon g a serial production line. As a function of inspection site, the capa city required to test and repair the parts would vary. The production- inspection model developed provides management with information on suc h capacity planning issues. It integrates the issues of inspection loc ation, inspection capacity, and production capacity. We consider a two -stage production line and evaluate cases when there are inspection si tes after each production stage and when inspection is carried out aft er the final stage. In the latter case, we find the conditions when th e safety stock required to meet the demand is higher, This has manager ial implications because the inventory level is not only higher, it is held after the final stage, i.e. has more value added onto it. Howeve r, if there are inspection stations after each stage, the capacity req uired to test and repair the parts is higher. The intent of this work is to provide insights into designing production-inventory systems for the serial model that we consider. We also discuss the generalization of the scope of the two-stage model to an N stage production line. In an extension to the problem, we consider the situation when not all t he defectives can be repaired. We extend the basic model by considerin g the effect of partial scraping of the defectives.