Unpaced production lines with jointly unbalanced operation time means and buffer capacities – their behaviour and performance

Abstract

The performance of unpaced production lines that are unbalanced in terms of both their operation time means and buffer storage sizes is studied in this paper. The lines were simulated under their steady-state operational mode of operation with various values of line length, buffer storage capacity, degree of imbalance, and patterns of imbalance. Output data (principally idle time and average buffer level) were analysed utilising a number of statistical tools. In terms of idle time, it was found that the best unbalanced pattern is an MT bowl configuration, coupled with a distribution of buffer capacity as evenly as possible. With respect to ABL, the best pattern turned out to be a monotone decreasing MT order, together with an ascending buffer size order.