An empirical investigation of the two-moment approximation for production lines

Stephen G. Powell · David F. Pyke

33 citations0/0 files storedInternational Journal of Production Research

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Advanced Queuing Theory Analysis Management and Optimization Techniques Assembly Line Balancing Optimization

Abstract

Since Muth (1973) it has generally been accepted that the throughput of production lines with variable processing times depends primarily on the first two moments of the processing time distribution. However, several recent studies have suggested that differences in higher moments may lead to significant differences in throughput. In order to shed light on this question, we examine the applicability of the two-moment approximation over a variety of types of lines (both serial and assembly) and a variety of processing time distributions. We find significant differences in throughput (on the order of 5%) even among commonly used probability distributions, and large differences (as large as 28%) among highly skewed and kurtotic distributions. We also find that the differences among distributions generally increase with the number of stations in the line and with the coefficient of variation of processing times.

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References

1988The Role of Work-in-Process Inventory in Serial Production Lines 1992A minmax distribution free procedure for the (Q, R) inventory model 1973The production rate of a series of work stations with variable service times∗1984On Approximations for Queues, III: Mixtures of Exponential Distributions 1975Two-Stage Production Systems with Intermediate Storage 1975On the mean production rate of a two-stage production system of the tandem type 1993The Output Process of Serial Production Lines of General Machines with Finite Buffers 1993Optimal Allocation of Work in Assembly Systems

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