Sarkar and Zangwill (S-Z, [Sarkar, D., W. I. Zangwill. 1991. Variance effects in cyclic production systems. Management Sci. 37(4, April) 444--453.]) have shown that in the presence of variance, setup and processing time reductions can have "detrimental" effects on the work-in-process (WIP)...

In the early 1990s, research began to show that the Japanese production theory, which espouses reduction of machine setup time as a sure way to improve production performance, may be limited. Specifically, it was found that reduction in mean setup times without any change in variance can,...