THE INEFFICIENCY OF A SERIES OF WORK STATIONS—A SIMPLE FORMULA

Abstract

Many production lines can be viewed as a series of work stations with inter-station storage (or buffers). Consideration of production lines as a series of finite queues permits evaluating inefficiencies in terms of the queue capacity at each station; the mean servicing (or work) times at each station and their distribution; and the numbers of stations. A simple rationale and numerically valid predicting formula is developed by considering first, the whole class of balanced two station systems and secondly, the effect of numbers of work stations. Numerical comparisons are made with the results of Hillier & Boling (1967), and Freeman (1968) as well as with computer simulation results obtained by the present writer.