A predictive model for the throughput of simple assembly systems

Along with the three-station serial line, the three-station assembly system is a fundamental building block of many production systems, yet its throughput is quite difficult to analyze. In this paper we develop approximate methods for predicting the throughput of unbalanced three-station assembly systems. We present a distribution-free approach for the general case, but our approximation can harness closed-form analytic results for particular distributions when they exist.