A. Grosfeldnir, SINGLE BOTTLENECK SYSTEMS WITH PROPORTIONAL EXPECTED YIELDS AND RIGIDDEMAND, European journal of operational research, 80(2), 1995, pp. 297-307
Citations number
15
Categorie Soggetti
Management,"Operatione Research & Management Science
This study considers single bottleneck systems: multistage production
systems where all setup costs except one are zero. The stage with non-
zero setup cost is defined to be the bottleneck (BN). Production is in
lots and demand needs to be satisfied in its entirety. The expected y
ield (number of good units) at each stage is proportional to the lot s
ize and only good items may proceed from one stage to another. We reve
al several general features of the optimal policy and discuss some spe
cific yields in detail. In particular it is shown that if units are pr
ocessed one-by-one on the non-BNs, the optimal lotsizing problem can b
e reduced to the problem of optimally lotsizing a single-stage 'equiva
lent machine'. Then, if the BN has Binomial yield, the 'equivalent mac
hine' itself has Binomial yields. Also, examples are given which demon
strate the non-intuitive structure of the optimal policy.