Analysis and Management

of Production System
Lesson 13: Line Analysis

Prof. Giulia Bruno

Department of Management and

Production Engineering

giulia.bruno@polito.it
Flow Variability

• Till now, our attention was on the analysis of a single

workstation
 The workstation impact on the output flow of jobs from the workstations
was not considered as this information was not needed to study the
performance of a single workstation
• But actually, the variability of a station has effects on the
behaviour of the next station on the line and, when the output
from a WS becomes the input to the next one, this aspect can
be no more neglected: this generates the so called flow
variability
• Flow: transfer of a job or a part from one machine to the other
Flow Variability

Arrivals:
• ta  mean time between two arrivals
• 𝜎𝑎  standard deviation of the time between two arrivals
• ra = 1/ta  mean arrival rate = number of pieces which
arrive to the line per unit time [Pcs/t]
• ca = 𝜎𝑎 /ta  variation coefficient of the mean time between
two arrivals
Flow Variability

• Low variability arrivals:

 A low variation coefficient of the time
between arrivals reveals regular and evenly
spaced arrivals

tt

• High variability arrivals:

 A high variation coefficient of the time
between arrivals reveals irregular arrivals

t
Flow Variability

Process:
• te  effective process time (failures, setup, natural
variability)
• re  effective capacity of the station
• ce  variation coefficient of the effective process time
• re > ra  otherwise, the station would be overloaded

Departures:
• td  neat time between two releases
• 𝜎𝑑  standard deviation of the time between two releases
• rd  number of pieces which come out of the machine per
unit time = ra
• cd  variation coefficient of the mean time between two
releases
Flow Variability

• In a serial line having a constant flow with no losses or

reworks, anything that comes out of a station enters
the following one
 The departures from each station are the inflows into the next
one

• If there’s no inventory between the two stations, then:

Flow Variability: propagation

• Propagation effect of variability:

 Let’s suppose to have two consecutive
workstations
 The second WS will be affected obviously by the
variability of processing times, but also by the first
WS variability
 This means that in a line composed of many
stations, there will be the propagation effect of
variability
 It is useful to put stations with high variability at the
end of the line, so that the total variability is not
heavily affected
Flow Variability: propagation

• High-usage station

 The flow variability out of a high-usage station is mainly

determined by the process variability of the station itself
Flow Variability: propagation

• Low-usage station

 The flow variability out of a low-usage station is mainly

determined by the flow variability of the station itself
Flow Variability

Utilization:
• 𝒖~𝟏 : the station is almost always busy and times
between departures will be equal to process times

• 𝒖~𝟎 : the station is almost never busy and times

between departures will be equal to arrival times

• 𝟎<𝒖<𝟏:
Flow variability

• From previous equations, we see that in case of

exponential systems (M/M/m model), the output process is
probabilistically identical to the input process
 This means that cd2 = ca2 = ce2 = 1
• For non-exponential systems, instead, it is a bit more
involving to obtain the cd2 value
 As already said, if the WS is extremely busy, the distribution
of time between departures is expected to be very close to the
process time distribution, so that cd2 should be similar to ce2
(mainly determined by the process variability of the station)
 If the WS is lightly loaded, instead, the inter-departure time
distribution should be similar to the inter-arrival time
distribution, so that cd2 should be similar to ca2 (mainly
determined by the flow variability of the station)
Exercise 1

• Pieces arrive with interarrival times ta = 21 min,

exponentially distributed
• Let’s consider the following stations:
 WSA: te = 20 min (exponentially distributed)
 WSB: te = 20 min, 𝜎𝑒 = 5
• The product X needs both WS A and WS B
processes
• Having the possibility to choose the sequence, is it
better to put WSA before WSB or WSB before WSA
in the line?
• Motivate the answer by computing total CT and WIP
on the line in both cases
Solution
Exercise 2
Rosemouth Ltd company has work shifts of 10 hours per day. The
production process consists of many phases, but the most important ones
are the ones of welding, configuration and testing.
• Welding process is done on a single machine station, its process time is
equal to 15 minutes, with variance 138,6 min2. This station undergoes
failures according to an exponential distribution (with mean time between
two failures equal to 30 hours and mean time to repair equal to 75
minutes having moderate variability).
• Configuration process happens on a single machine station too. The
process has a moderate variability and its mean time is equal to 5
minutes. Each 10 meters, the machine needs to be reset and the setting
requires exactly 10 minutes.
• The testing is done on 5 parallel machines. The operation lasts around
10 minutes with standard deviation equal to 5 minutes. Each hour, the
operations have to stop for exactly 6 minutes in order to check the
machines.
Assuming a demand of 3 parts per hour with moderate variability, compute
the line performances.
Solution