A PREDICTIVE MODEL FOR THE THROUGHPUT OF UNBALANCED, UNBUFFERED THREE-STATION SERIAL LINES

Abstract The three-station serial line is a fundamental building block of many complex production systems. In this paper we develop methods for predicting the throughput of unbalanced three-station serial lines. We model the variability of processing times using a variety of probability distributions that spans the range of variabilities encountered in practice. We develop procedures for approximating throughput, for any allocation of total mean processing time, based on the throughput of a small number of easily analyzed cases.

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