Optimal ordering of operations in a manufacturing chain

We consider the effect of changes in the order of operations in a chain of manufacturing operations in which product differentiation increases at each operation of the chain. We investigate several measures for evaluating the performance of such a chain, and show that the optimal ordering of the ope rations depends critically on the performance measure. We give a unified tr eatment of earlier results that provides new intuition. We then extend thes e results to an explicit cost-minimization model. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.