Improving flow lines by unbalancing

Abstract

The paper's aim is to show how the performance of a balanced manufacturing flow line can be improved on the critical WIP level by making it unbalanced to some extent. The explanation and a quantitative example are presented. There is a trade-off between system balance and stability, and it can be handled as an optimization problem. Data are gathered using a physical simulation system. The analysis is carried out with a discrete time simulation program which applies next-event time advance mechanism. The model has been implemented in AIMMS modelling language.