Alternative approach to determine the common cycle time for a multi-item production system with discontinuous deliveries and failure in rework

This study employs an alternative approach to determine common production cycle time for a multi-item production system with discontinuous deliveries and failure in rework. A straightforward approach using algebraic derivation is proposed here to reexamine a specific common cycle time problem studied by Chiu et al. (2013a,b), where they used the conventional method with the need of applying first-order and second-order differentiations to system cost function for proof of convexity before deriving the optimal common cycle time. The result of this study is confirmed to be identical to that was obtained in Chiu et al. (2013a,b). This alternative approach enables practitioners who may not have sufficient knowledge of differential calculus to manage the real-life multi-item production systems more effectively.