The Relationship between Batch Size, Throughput and Utilization in Manufacturing Processes

In order to determine the efficiency of a production system, batch size and throughput are two important parameters that must be considered. In order to ensure system efficiencies and meet optimum utilization, batch size must conform to the throughput. The use of Queuing Network Theory to study the effect of batch size and throughput in optimizing the resource utilization, particularly machine resources, in a manufacturing system is discussed in this paper. A manufacturing company industry dealing with assembling operations in its production lines was chosen for this study. The findings of the study concluded that increasing batch size and throughput increases the utilization. When the capacity is not enough to meet the demand requirement, bottlenecks will occur.