c-bottlenecks in serial production lines: identification and application

The bottleneck of a production line is a machine that impedes the system's performance in the strongest manner. In production lines with the so-called Markovian model of machine reliability, bottlenecks with respect to the downtime, uptime, and the cycle time of the machines can be considered. The two former have been addressed in recent publications (S.-Y. Chiang et al., 1998; 1998). The latter is investigated. Specifically, using a novel aggregation procedure for performance analysis of production lines with Markovian machines having different cycle time, we develop a method for c-bottleneck identification and apply it to a camshaft production line at an automotive engine plant.