Shifting Production Bottlenecks: Causes, Cures, and Conundrums

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Authors
Lawrence, Stephen R.
Buss, Arnold H.
Subjects
Bottlenecks
Utilization
Capacity
Queueing Networks
Advisors
Date of Issue
1995
Date
1995
Publisher
Production and Operations Management Society
Language
Abstract
We examine the phenomenon of shifting production bottlenecks fr m an analytic perspective. We quantify the propensity of a work center to be a bottleneck, defined as maximal queue length, using a simple Jackson production network model. Compa 'son of the analytic model against an empirical simulation-based model shows that the two are in good agreement. A scalar measure of bottleneck shiftiness is proposed and used to investigate several policies for mitigating shiftiness. Simulation experiments show that several commonly observed managerial policies for coping with shifting bottlenecks actually increase shiftiness. but that shiftiness declines when the capacity of non bottleneck resources is increased.
Type
Article
Description
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/10945/60791
Series/Report No
Department
Operations Research (OR)
Organization
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
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Funder
Format
1 p.
Citation
Lawrence, S.R. and Buss, A.H., “Shifting Production Bottlenecks: Causes, Cures, and Conundrums,” Production and Operations Management, Vol. 3, No. 1, Winter 1994, pp. 21-37.
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This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.
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