Analysis of the Lead Time Distribution in Closed Loop Manufacturing Systems

In several manufacturing systems found in the automotive, food and semiconductor industries, product quality or value deterioration due to excessive residence time in the system are observed. This phenomenon generates defective or low value products, thus undermining the performance of these systems. In this paper, we develop an exact analytical method for calculating the lead time distribution of closed loop systems and present an heuristic to predict the peaks of this distribution. Numerical results show previously uninvestigated behavior of closed loop manufacturing systems under lead time constraints and provide insights on the design of these complex systems.