Kb. Hendricks et Jo. Mcclain, THE OUTPUT PROCESSES OF SERIAL PRODUCTION LINES OF GENERAL MACHINES WITH FINITE BUFFERS, Management science, 39(10), 1993, pp. 1194-1201
Citations number
23
Categorie Soggetti
Management,"Operatione Research & Management Science
Little is known about the interaction among manufacturing subsystems i
n a factory. The output of one manufacturing subsystem is usually the
input to one or more others in the plant. For example, a production li
ne may provide input to another manufacturing stage, a shipping system
, or an automated parts conveyor. In all of these examples, the charac
teristics of the output from the production line can affect the subseq
uent process. This paper examines the output process of a serial produ
ction line of N machines with general processing time distributions an
d finite buffer capacities. Simulation is used to examine the effects
of line length, buffer capacity, and buffer placement on the inter-dep
arture distribution and correlation structure (autocorrelation functio
n) of the output process of the production line. Results from this ana
lysis are useful in setting production line design parameters and in d
etermining the extent to which buffer placement can be used to control
the variability of the output process, and thereby the amount of work
-in-process present in downstream subsystems. Additional insights are
provided to help explain why small buffers in production lines are nor
mally adequate and to help us better understand the effects of buffers
on tightly coupled production systems. By using a variety of processi
ng time distributions, previously unknown effects attributed to skew o
f processing time are revealed. Since skew can often be reduced or eli
minated by operator training, these effects are of particular interest
since they can help to quantify some of the benefits of training.