Operations Sequencing in Flexible Production Lines With Bernoulli Machines

In flexible manufacturing environments, the performance of a production system is often affected by the sequence of operations. While performance evaluation, improvement and lean design of production systems have been studied extensively, the joint effect of productivity and quality parameters on operations sequencing remains practically unexplored. Indeed, determining the optimal operation sequence has significant implications from both practical and theoretical perspectives. In this paper, in the framework of Bernoulli reliability and quality models, we develop effective indicators that are simple and easy to implement in practice to determine the optimal operation sequence that maximizes the system's production rate. Note to Practitioners-This paper shows how one can determine the optimal sequence in a two-machine-one-buffer serial line based on indicators, which are simple functions of the productivity and quality parameters of the machines and the capacity of the buffer. It demonstrates that the machine with higher efficiency and/or lower quality should be placed upstream to maximize the throughput. Finally, it shows that if the buffer is sufficiently large, then the machine with higher efficiency should always be placed upstream regardless of the quality performance of the machines.