On the versatility of Little’s Law in operations management: a review and classification using vignettes

Abstract

Despite Little’s Law being considered as one of the ‘laws’ of operations management, evidence of its application in an empirical context is diverse and diffuse. Hence, this paper aims to identify, classify and consolidate published empirical applications of Little’s Law in a systematic manner to better understand its versatility. This paper undertakes a systematic literature review of the databases of the five main publishers of operations management journals and snowball sampling for additional papers. A final sample of 128 empirical journal articles is identified and categorized. Tactical, medium-term decisions relating to capacity dynamics and operations re-engineering are the most popular categories. To give further insights into versatility, vignettes for each category are developed. The review and vignettes confirm Little’s Law as a highly relevant paradigm to operations management decisions due to its empirical versatility across levels, sectors and time domains. The paper suggests four factors to underline the empirical versatility of Little’s Law in operations management: applicability, utility, simplicity and visibility.

Keywords:

• Systematic review
• law of manufacturing
• factory physics
• production systems
• WIP

Acknowledgements

This was Professor Denis Towill’s (1933–2015) final paper. He initiated our work related to Little’s Law and made substantial contributions to the first draft of this paper before he passed away. On behalf of those working in the Logistics Systems Dynamics Group at Cardiff, we would like to acknowledge his contribution to our lives and careers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrew Potter

Andrew Potter is a Reader in Transport and Logistics at Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University. His research covers many areas of logistics and operations management although he is particularly interested in how the principles of operations and supply chain management can be applied into logistics. Through research, Andrew has worked with a variety of industrial sectors including grocery, steel, freight transport and construction. He is also a Member of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport and a member of the organizing committee for the International Symposium on Logistics.

Denis R. Towill

Denis R. Towill (1933–2015) was a Research Professor in the Logistics Systems Dynamics Group at Cardiff University. He was a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and had served on their Management of Technology and Construction Sector Inquiry Panels. More recently, he was a member of the Technology Foresight Systems Engineering Panel. He served his apprenticeship in heavy electro-mechanical engineering. Since then, he has worked with the aerospace, automotive, electronics, steel and construction sectors. In his later years, his substantive interest was in providing industry with a proven methodology for achieving the seamless supply chain.

Jonathan Gosling

Dr Jon Gosling is a Reader in Supply Chain Management in the Logistics and Operations Management Section of Cardiff Business School. Prior to becoming an academic, he worked as a supply chain analyst for Unipart/Jaguar. He works closely with a range of organizations to better understand appropriate strategies for engineer-to-order supply chains, and his work has been published in a range of operations management and engineering journals.