Fs. Hillier et Kc. So, ON THE SIMULTANEOUS-OPTIMIZATION OF SERVER AND WORK ALLOCATIONS IN PRODUCTION LINE SYSTEMS WITH VARIABLE PROCESSING TIMES, Operations research, 44(3), 1996, pp. 435-443
Citations number
21
Categorie Soggetti
Management,"Operatione Research & Management Science","Operatione Research & Management Science
The allocation of servers and the allocation of work are two important
decision variables in designing production line systems. Previous stu
dies of each variable in isolation have found that throughput is maxim
ized by using an allocation that gives preferential treatment to inter
ior stations (especially center stations) over the two end stations. I
n this paper we study the simultaneous optimization of server and work
allocations and obtain some surprising results of a different nature.
One key finding is the L-phenomenon, whereby the throughput is maximi
zed by assigning all extra servers over one per station to just one of
the end stations and then adjusting the work allocation so that this
station has by far the greatest amount of work per server. Another key
finding is the multiple-server phenomenon, whereby extra servers add
far more throughput per server than the initial one-per-station server
s. Both findings have important implications for the design of some pr
oduction line systems in ways that will greatly improve their efficien
cy. Similar conclusions are drawn when lower and/or upper bounds are i
mposed on the number of servers per station and the number of stations
is included as a decision variable.