Powell, Stephen G.; Schultz, Kenneth L. - In: Management Science 50 (2004) 8, pp. 1095-1105
idle time. We refer to this as state-dependent behavior, in contrast to the state-independent behavior of machines. In this … paper, we develop several models for the state-dependent behavior of production workers. We then use these models to analyze … the relation of line length to throughput in these systems. We find that state-dependent behavior makes serial lines more …