Maximizing the Thruput of a packaging line is really not as complex as you might think.
In today's environment of tremendous competitive pressures, brought about by the development of the Mega-Buyers such as Wal-Mart and Cosco, producers of consumer products are forced to take extraordinary measures to reduce their costs and increase their thruput. Often times the people responsible for making the productivity improvements fall prey to the logic that if I improve the performance of a specific machine the overall production line will benefit. There is no guarantee that improvement will be the result and often times the overall thruput of a line can suffer as a result of efficiency gain on a specific machine. In order to understand how that is possible lets take a look at how a production line operates.