Production Line Efficiency: A Comprehensive Guide for Managers

This book covers the area of unpaced and unbalanced production lines.
You will fi nd an up-to-date discussion of how designing these lines can
be made more effi cient by taking advantage of inherent imbalance—for
example, operators who work at different speeds—a concept that has traditionally
been seen as an obstacle to effi cient production. A series of
experiments are presented to illustrate the issues involved in improving
performance through production line imbalance. This area is of interest
to postgraduate and executive-level students interested in the area of production
and to managers of manual or semiautomated production lines
who are interested in innovative approaches to line design. In this book
you will fi nd some surprisingly easy ways to improve performance with
low or zero costs. Emphasis is placed on reducing the amount of time
production lines lie idle and on reducing work in process. This is a timely
contribution to the fi eld when managers are casting around for new ways
to cut waste and reduce their use of natural resources.