Some data for applying the bowl phenomenon to large production line systems

Abstract

The bowl phenomenon provides a way of increasing the throughput of some production line systems with variable processing times by purposely unbalancing the line in a certain manner. However, previously available numerical results for applying the bowl phenomenon have been quite limited. We extend these numerical results here by obtaining the optimal allocation of work for somewhat larger cases than previously considered. We also develop some guidelines and data for extrapolating these results to estimate the optimal allocation of work for even larger production lines that are beyond the reach of exact solution methods. The results cover a broad cross-section of values of both buffer capacities and the coefficient of variation of processing times.