The effect of straight- and U-shaped lines on quality

Straight lines and U-lines are two commonly used layouts for production lin es, To date, no research has studied the effect of these layouts on the qua lity of the products produced by the line. This paper examines U-shaped lin es and straight lines from the viewpoint of their effect on quality, which is organized into Juran's quality planning, quality control, and quality im provement categories. Two or more quantitative measures are developed far e ach quality category, the effect of the shape of the line on the values of these measures is carefully analyzed, and the implications for problems of realistic size are discussed. We find that U-shaped lines outperform straig ht lines in all of the aspects of quality we examined.