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Manufacturing Output Variability
and the Service Level
Output variability occurs in manufacturing systems
due to:
Manual labor performance variability
Machines failure and repair mechanisms
Output Variability at Scania Engine
Production Line
200
Number of parts produced
175
150
125
100
75
50
25
0
10
20
30
40
50
Day
60
70
80
90
100
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The main output variable of interest is the total
amount of parts produced by the system during the
time period [1,t]
This variable, denoted with Zt, is random with
expected value E[Zt] and variance var[Zt], which both
depend on the time period of evaluation as they are
increasing functions in t.
The Service Level
Zt approximately normally distributed
This enables calculating the Service Level (SL) which
is, the probability to meet a certain customer order
(composed of x products) within a certain due time t.
x Rp t
SL( x, t ) PZ t x 1
v t
where,
v lim
t
varZ t
t
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Example
An industrial engineer collected and reported to you
the daily production quantities from a production line
over a period of two weeks. Estimate the SL of the
system for orders 350, 940 and 1012 products to be
delivered within 8 days?
Day
Q(daily)
10
122
165
95
135
88
126
177
125
78
93
Example
Daily Rp = avg [122, 165, 93] = 120.4 product/day
v var[122,165 , 93] / 10 = 107.8 product2 /day
350 120.4 8
SL(350,8) 1
1
107.8 8
940 120.4 8
SL(940,8) 1
0.785
107.8 8
1012 120.4 8
SL(1012,8) 1
0.05
107.8 8
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SL vs. order size (x) for due date = 8
days
1
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
850
900
950
1000
1050
1100
Order size
SL vs due date (t) for an order of
900 products
1
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
5
5.5
6.5
7.5
8.5
due date
900
940
980
1020
1060
1100
1140
1180
1220
1260
1300
1340
1380
1420
1460
1500
1540
1580
1620
1660
1700
1740
1780
1820
1860
1900
1940
1980
2020
2060
2100
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SL as a function of (x,t)
1
0.8
0.6
0.8-1
0.6-0.8
0.4
0.4-0.6
0.2
12
0.2-0.4
0
10
0-0.2