ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF DUAL-CONSTRAINT JOB SHOPS

This paper describes the results of a simulation study to examine the effects of different organizational structures on the performance of a dual-constraint job shop production system. A hypothetical shop in which machines and workers are constraining resources is the setting of the study. The shop consists of divisions comprised of work centers which, in turn, contain machines to which workers are assigned. There are fewer workers than machines. Variations in organizational structure are achieved by different allocations of a fixed number of work centers to the divisions. Each structure is studied for three levels of labor flexibility. Mean flow-time, flow-time variance, and worker transfers between divisions and work centers are used as performance measures.