Options for Maintaining Weak FIFO in Parallel Queues

Abstract

Maintaining a FIFO sequence is a common aspect of manufacturing, especially in lean manufacturing. This can easily be realized by having FIFO lanes, where items are added at one end and removed at the other end. This maintains their FIFO sequence. In industry, however, there is often the situation that the required quantity of items would result in a very long single FIFO lane. This creates subsequent problems with available floor space. Hence, a practical solution is often to have multiple parallel FIFO lanes. However, a separate system is now needed to maintain the FIFO sequence across multiple parallel FIFO lanes. Ideally this would not require much additional managerial overhead and high investment costs. This paper investigates different options on how to manage parallel FIFO lanes, and measures their sequencing performance.