Mitigating the Effects of Manpower Reductions at a Central Issue Facility by Improving the Allocation of Servers: A Simulation Study

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to determine a preferred server allocation and a preferred customer batch size for processing customers at an Army Central Issue Facility (CIF) under various manpower levels. The CIF is a retail warehouse which issues tactical clothing and equipment to individual soldiers. It is facing potential manpower reductions from the current level of 19 servers. The CIF exhibits flow shop characteristics. An assembly line balancing approach was used with the objective of reducing the customer's average time-in-system. Five server allocation heuristics and three customer batch sizes were examined. The evaluation tool was a computer simulation using data from a time-motion study. Results indicate that customer batch size has a greater effect-on a customer's average time-in-system than server allocation heuristic. In this study a batch size of seven resulted in lower average times-in-system than did a batch size of one or twenty-one. Manpower utilization, Computer simulation, Production engineering, Models, Productivity.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 1994
Accession Number
ADA285270

Entities

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  • Christopher J. Wicker
  • Michael K. Garrity

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  • Air Force Institute of Technology

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