BUFFERING UNBALANCED ASSEMBLY SYSTEMS

Many assembly systems are required to hold minimal work-in-process inv entories because of space or capital limitations. Unfortunately, in th e presence of variable processing times, output from an assembly line may be severely restricted if no work-in-process inventory is held. Th us, assembly lines often should be designed to have minimal, but not z ero, buffer capacity. In this paper we address the issue of how one sh ould optimally deploy limited buffer capacity in unbalanced assembly s ystems, and we find that the answer is sometimes counterintuitive. We study simple asynchronous assembly systems with random processing time s and develop simple heuristic rules that can be used to improve exist ing operations and to support line designers who are faced with increa singly rapid cycles of new product introduction. We apply these heuris tics to several larger systems and discover that they perform quite we ll.