This book covers the area of unpaced and unbalanced production lines. You will ? nd an up-to-date discussion of how designing these lines can be made more ef? cient by taking advantage of inherent imbalance—for example, operators who work at different speeds—a concept that has traditionally been seen as an obstacle to ef? cient production. A series of experiments are presented to illustrate the issues involved in improving performance through production line imbalance. This area is of interest to postgraduate and executive-level students interested in the area of production and to managers of manual or semiautomated production lines who are interested in innovative approaches to line design. In this book you will ? nd some surprisingly easy ways to improve performance with low or zero costs. Emphasis is placed on reducing the amount of time production lines lie idle and on reducing work in process. This is a timely contribution to the ? eld when managers are casting around for new ways to cut waste and reduce their use of natural resources.
Keywords
Production line, unbalanced lines, idle time, average buffer levels, unpaced lines