Article ID: | iaor19932152 |
Country: | United States |
Volume: | 39 |
Issue: | 1 |
Start Page Number: | 101 |
End Page Number: | 106 |
Publication Date: | Jan 1993 |
Journal: | Management Science |
Authors: | Powell Stephen G., Pyke David F., Baker Kenneth R. |
Keywords: | work, stochastic processes |
The authors investigate how to allocate work in stochastic assembly systems so as to maximize throughput. They use Markov models for systems with exponential processing times and simulation-based methods for other probability distributions. The authors find that assembly systems should be unbalanced in the direction of assigning less work to assembly and more to component stations. They also find that greater parallelism offers greater opportunity for improvement.