How can Theory of Constraints principles be reconciled with line balancing?
What will be an ideal response?
Line balancing strives to assign work to stations such that the amount of work at each station is equal. Work flows from station to station based on a cycle time that is determined based on the number of units to be produced per unit time. Theory of Constraints stresses the need to balance flow with demand and is concerned with preserving flow through the bottleneck, or lowest capacity station. Flow can be preserved by protecting the bottleneck with protective WIP and making sure that market demand is sufficient to support continuous bottleneck operation. Line balancing, as explained in the text, assumes that all task times are constant. So the person performing the balance can try to allocate capacity as evenly as possible. If task times were stochastic, then flow would not be preserved with classic line balancing techniques because the lowest capacity work station would occasionally fall idle.
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