Inspector location in convergent production lines

Abstract

This paper develops a finite-horizon denumerable state-space dynamic programming formulation of the inspector location problem in convergent production lines. The effects of the inspection point location decisions on production planning are clarified, and the resulting complexity of the determination of the costs of not detecting defective units is demonstrated under the assumption that all detected defective units are eliminated from the production line. A sample problem is solved by a backward induction algorithm to obtain the minimum-cost screening program.