Abstract
The research established a new index to analyze and measure the process balance for complex re-entrant factories. A formalized process for designing equipment configuration of re-entrant factories was also proposed. Unlike traditional line balance efficiency which failed to consider the impact of transport times between processes, the proposed line balance rate takes into consideration of possible long transport time between processes. It also used the geometric mean to measure the goodness of the line balance. Simulation of some 30 line configurations using true factory data showed that the proposed line balance efficiency has better capability to explain the production performance such as cycle time, work-in-process level, and production rate compared to the traditional line balance efficiency. It is also noted that the same formula for line balance rate can also be reduced to measure the goodness of line balance for straight-through production lines. Contributions of the research include: 1. Providing a decision-making process for managers to machine configurations with given production demands. 2. Providing a better index to measure the goodness of balance rate which closely related to the performance of the production lines.