Abstract—Balancing or unbalancing production lines is still a major subject on operations research, given the difficulty of assessing the benefits of specific lines configurations. Due to constant and dramatic changes in global industry scenario, new alternatives are pointed out every moment to improve decision-making on that subject. This article presents a simulation proposal to evaluate the impact of imbalance in assembly lines on their performance, especially work in process inventory. The hypothesis, script and questions to be answered with the help of simulation are elaborated, opening space to a new approach to design unbalanced assembly lines.

Index Terms—unbalanced capacity, work-in-process, inventory, assembly line

Cite: Rogério F. da Silva, Renelson R. Sampaio, and Francisco U. Passos, "Unbalancing Capacity: A Possible Way of Reducing Work-in-Process Inventory," Journal of Industrial and Intelligent Information, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 198-203, May 2016. doi: 10.18178/jiii.4.3.198-203