Abstract
This is an exploratory study of “hybrid” lines, i.e., “paced” lines whose cycle time can be extended (something like an “unpaced” line) when some task incompletions occur. Such a line should have its tasks classified into two categories; only the tasks in the first category have sufficiently high incompletion costs to justify extending the cycle time to ensure their completion. A heuristic procedure is developed to perform this classification, and we found that such hybrid lines may have a lower total cost (i.e. sum of labor and incompletion costs) than standard paced lines.