Sg. Powell et Df. Pyke, AN EMPIRICAL-INVESTIGATION OF THE 2-MOMENT APPROXIMATION FOR PRODUCTION LINES, International Journal of Production Research, 32(5), 1994, pp. 1137-1157
Citations number
NO
Categorie Soggetti
Engineering,"Operatione Research & Management Science
Since Muth (1973) it has generally been accepted that the throughput o
f production lines with variable processing times depends primarily on
the first two moments of the processing time distribution. However, s
everal recent studies have suggested that differences in higher moment
s may lead to significant differences in throughput. In order to shed
light on this question, we examine the applicability of the two-moment
approximation over a variety of types of lines (both serial and assem
bly) and a variety of processing time distributions. We find significa
nt differences in throughput (on the order of 5%) even among commonly
used probability distributions, and large differences (as large as 28%
) among highly skewed and kurtotic distributions. We also find that th
e differences among distributions generally increase with the number o
f stations in the line and with the coefficient of variation of proces
sing times.