The impact of failure, repair and joint imbalance of processing time means and buffer sizes on the performance of unpaced production lines

This article studies the performance of unpaced serial production lines that are subject to breakdown and are imbalanced in terms of both of their processing time means (MTs) and buffer storage capacities (BCs). Simulation results show that the best pattern in terms of throughput is a balanced line With respect to average buffer level; the best configuration is a monotone decreasing MT order, together with an ascending BC arrangement. Statistical analysis shows that BC, combined patterns of MT and BC imbalance, line length and degree of imbalance all contribute significantly to performance.