Quality and Quantity Modeling of a Production Line

Abstract

During the past three decades, the success of the Toyota Production System has spurred research in the area of manufacturing systems engineering. Two research fields, productivity and quality, have been extensively studied and reported separately both in the manufacturing systems research literature and the practitioner, but there is a lack of research in the intersection of these areas. In addition to that, most studies on the relationship among manufacturing system design, quality and productivity are based on anecdotal evidence or qualitative reasoning that lack sound scientific quantitative foundations. This study tries to establish a scientific foundation to investigate how production system design and operation influence productivity and product quality by developing conceptual and computational models and performing experiments. By doing so, this study will show an important part of the way to produce high quality products with minimum cost.