Abstract—In this paper a simulation study has been carried
out on unpaced reliable and unreliable production lines having
multiple products processing in batches with setup /
changeover time. The aim of this study is to evaluate the design
of multi product production lines operating under operation
time variability for different products and compare the
performance measures between reliable and unreliable lines.
Simulation is performed on various line lengths having
different mean buffer capacities in order to evaluate and
observe the consistency of the results with the increase in
number of stations and buffer capacities. Results obtained in
this study have been analyzed in comparison with balanced
lines of same configuration to find out the unbalanced
scenarios / combinations caused by operation time variability
in which unbalanced lines either outperforms or produce
results closer to that of balanced lines.
Index Terms—Buffers, multiple products, operation time
variability, plant simulation, unpaced production line.
Suffi Ur Rehman and Lianyu Zheng are with the Department of
Industrial & Manufacturing System Engineering, Beihang University
(BUAA, Beijing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics), Beijing, China
(e-mail: suffirehman@hotmail.com; lyzheng@buaa.edu.cn).
[PDF]
Cite: Suffi Ur Rehman and Lianyu Zheng, "Operation Time Variability in Multi Product Unpaced
Production Lines," International Journal of Engineering and Technology vol. 7, no. 6, pp. 490-496, 2015.
