Beer Distribution Game See Also Supply Chain Dynamics; Supply Chain Management; Supply Network Information Sys- Tems

Balancing loss is the quantification of the lack of balance in a production line, defined as the percentage of time not used for productive purposes with the total time invested in making a product. The importance of this measure lies in its ability to assess perhaps the most problematic of all the detailed design decisions in product layout, namely that of line balanc ing . Achieving a perfectly balanced allocation of activities to workstations is nearly always impossible in practice and some imbalance in the work allocation between stages results. So the effectiveness of the line-balancing activity can be measured by balancing loss. In effect it is the time wasted through the unequal allocation of work.