Lot splitting in unbalanced production systems

This research investigates the impact of lot splitting in unbalanced produc tion systems, under a variety of experimental conditions. Scheduling polici es specifically designed for use in the presence of a long-term bottleneck, a condition frequently encountered in practice, are developed and tested. Results indicate that when steps are taken at nonbottleneck work centers to capitalize on capacity imbalances through increasing the number of setups and, hence, the variety of products produced, shop effectiveness is improve d. The results also indicate that scheduling policies that tend to increase the size of the average process batch retard the overlapping of operations , which is critical to the success of the lot-splitting methodology in redu cing flow time. Finally, it is shown that increasing capacity at nonbottlen eck work centers along with implementation of effectiveness-oriented schedu ling polices leads to improved shop performance.