The analysis of production systems

Abstract The extreme cases of production operations—the job shop and the progressive assembly line—are viewed as special cases of a single general production model. They differ only in time span and the number of possible production routes. The common elements of the extreme systems can be studied by analysing a recent production system innovation, the carousel-work-transporter system. In this paper a simple production system capable of producing many different products is examined by decomposing the problem into its major parts (carousel, work transporter, linking conveyors and the work stations) and then using the results to compute overall system performance. We introduce the concept of virtual inventory and show how systems with this property can be more productive than progressive storage systems. While the system can be analysed by using computer simulation models we use only analytic queue theory models to obtain approximate results.

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