“On-the-fly” line balancing with very little WIP

Abstract

Dynamic line balancing (DLB) allows the workers on a production line to help each other with some tasks. However, for buffer capacity of 2 or less per stage, the advantage of DLB appeared to be lost. In this paper we show that DLB can increase efficiency even when buffers are absent. The improvement is a result of using more information when deciding who should do the shared task. The new information is supplied by a more careful measurement of how much unfinished work is represented by the jobs in the system. Previous results are extended to situations where jobs must be done in the order of arrival, which precludes using rules like SPT (shortest processing time) to decide which job to do next. It is shown that DLB offers improved efficiency in this case as well. Furthermore, this additional restriction makes it even more valuable to use additional information in deciding when workers should help each other.