Performance of Reliable and Unreliable Unpaced Production Lines with Uneven Buffer Allocation

We compare the efficiency of reliable and unreliable unpaced production lines that are unbalanced in terms of their buffer storage capacities to a corresponding line with equal sized buffers. The lines were simulated with different values of line length, buffer storage size, mean buffer capacity, and configuration of buffer imbalance. The results show that, for both reliable and unreliable lines the best buffer allocation patterns in terms of generating lower idle times as compared to a balanced line are those where total available buffer capacity is allocated as evenly as possible between workstations, whereas concentrating more buffer capacity towards the end of the line gives best average buffer level results.