John J. Bartholdi, III; Eisenstein, Donald D. - In: Manufacturing & Service Operations Management 7 (2005) 2, pp. 121-129
assembly, where workers are generalists, are "bucket brigades." We describe how one firm used bucket brigades as an … intermediate strategy to migrate from craft assembly to assembly lines. The adoption of bucket brigades led to a narrowing of tasks … from craft to assembly lines, we extend the standard model of bucket brigades to capture hand-off and walk-back times. …