The Nature, Performance and Operating Characteristics of Series Production Systems

One of the most frequently occurring classes of production system can be represented by a series of productive facilities arranged so that work flows sequentially between them. These systems can be largely defined by the output characteristics of the individual productive elements of the system and the nature of the flow between them. In reality, perhaps the most straightforward series production system is where the output rate of each productive facility is not deterministic but can be described by a unimodal distribution of some sort and the flow between each facility is not mechanically paced in any way. On a macro level such a system could represent a series of major productive units feeding into each other, where overall capacity issues would be predominant. On the micro level the system describes an unpaced manual assembly line.