Mathematical Problems in Engineering
Volume 5 (2000), Issue 6, Pages 479-498
doi:10.1155/S1024123X99001209

Bottlenecks with respect to due-time performance in pull serial production lines

Jingshan Li and Semyon M. Meerkov

Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of Michigan, 1301 Beal Ave., Ann Arbor 48109-2122, MI, USA

Received 10 September 1999

Copyright © 2000 Jingshan Li and Semyon M. Meerkov. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

In this work, serial production lines with finished goods buffers operating in the pull regime are considered. The machines are assumed to obey Bernoulli reliability model. The problem of satisfying customers demand is addressed. The level of demand satisfaction is quantified by the due-time performance (DTP), which is defined as the probability to ship to the customer a required number of parts during a fixed time interval. Within this scenario, the definitions of DTP bottlenecks are introduced and a method for their identification is developed.