在鞋類製造方面，工廠往往使用一定的長度之產線以維持他們的生產線。各種因素被放入一個工廠的設計，但線路長度因為訂單大小，可用空間和機器要求與其緊密相關而被認為習慣的設置。然而，即使當他們可以選擇不同的生產長度（例如，當它們被規劃比一般要小，或者相反的順序設施），使用不同的線之長度卻不被看作是一個必要或可行的選擇。
本研究旨在尋找到生產線長度對生產設施的整體性能的影響。再者，對不同長度的鞋類生產設施之整體性能的影響進行調查。這些因素包括生產區之間的傳輸批次的大小、不同的鞋款樣式、不同程度的變化之處理時間。然而，實驗與真正的工廠是不盡相同，主要是由於成本因素在不同長度的差異，與存在相互競爭的公司之間。從這些公司收集的數據也不是一個可行的選擇，因為每個工廠生產不同類型或不同款式的鞋子。為求公平並比較平等的鞋款式，本研究基於真實設施上的多種類生產功能而建立仿真模型，並亞洲鞋廠生產專家合作及完成了該模型的開發和驗證。據了解，從仿真結果，生產線的長度於不同的方式、不同的製造條件下有一定的影響。這些影響於不同地區之間的生產設施也各不相同。

In footwear manufacturing, factories tend to maintain their production lines at a certain length. Various considerations are put into the design of a factory, but line length is perceived more as a customary setting since it is tightly related to order size, space availability, and machine requirement. However, even when they can opt for different production length (e.g. when they are planning for a facility whose order are smaller than the usual, or vice versa), using different line length is not seen as a necessary or even a viable option.
This study aims to look into the effects of production line length on the overall performance of a production facility. In addition, aspects which may influence the overall performance of footwear production facility at different lengths will also be investigated. These factors include the size of transfer batch among production areas, different shoes styles, and different levels of variation in the processing time. Experimenting with real factories is not possible, mainly due to cost and the fact that different lengths are found in different, competing companies. Gathering data from these companies is also not a viable option since each factory produces different types or styles of shoes. To accommodate fair comparison using equal shoe styles, a simulation model was built based on a length-switch-enabled projection of real facility. The development and validation of the model was done in cooperation with production experts from Asian-based footwear factories. It was learned from the result of the simulation that line length has an impact on production. Through this result, different manners of impact were discovered in a diverse manufacturing condition. These impacts also vary among different areas in the production facility.

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