Modeling and Analysis of a Production Line Operated According to Demand

Abstract

We shall consider a production line which is operated according to demand for products so as to minimize product shortages and excesses of inventory. In our model, the capacities of buffer storages and a warehouse are adjusted according to demand, and the blocking of each stage plays an essential role in reducing unnecessary inventories. The efficiency of the line is measured by the sum of the average shortage of products and the average inventory of in-process and finished products in the steady state. We propose two efficient approximate solution methods evaluating the line efficiency in terms of configuration parameters. Of these two methods, the second method requires more tedious calculations, but is more accurate. We confirm the validity of the approaches by comparing the solutions for many example problems obtained by our methods with those obtained by computer simulation.