Reliable and Unreliable Unpaced Production Lines with Unbalanced Operation Time Means – A Comparison

Reliable and unreliable unpaced production lines are simulated with various line lengths, buffer capacities, degrees of mean processing time imbalance and patterns of imbalance. Performance measures are idle time and average buffer level. It was found that for both reliable and unreliable lines, the best configurations are a bowl arrangement and a monotone decreasing order, with the first resulting in lower idle times and the second leading to lower average buffer levels.