Production Line Efficiency

CHAPTER 2

The Unpaced Production Line

Introduction

In Chapter 1 we saw that production lines can be defined in terms of whether they are “paced” or “unpaced.” A “paced” line refers to the fact that there is a fixed time for items to move through the process; for example, Burger King cooks its hamburgers using a cooking time process of exactly 90 seconds. Pacing the line may mean that the assembly line itself may move every 60 seconds (for example) or it can be that the steps of the process are timed, and then the parts are moved manually to the next stage when the timer reaches the end of its cycle time. Obviously, completely automatized lines are paced with each task taking a fixed time and the whole operation being completed in a predetermined ...