Batching and capacity models for manufacturing cells with metered flow

Abstract

Abstract This paper presents two models for batching and capacity decisions applicable to manufacturing cells with metered flow. The models use radically different assumptions concerning the supply of work to be processed in the cell and the removal of finished products. Both models allow the user to determine the optimal operation time through the computation of the marginal value of the capacity. The minimum waiting time model (MWT) is a stochastic model while the full load economic capacity model (FLEC) is a deterministic model. The latter model has interesting parallelisms with the classical economic order quantity (EOQ) model. Finally, both models are contrasted by highlighting some characteristics.