Earlier studies on production systems had indicated that the output is optimum when the less variable stages are loaded slightly more than the more variable stages. It is shown in this paper that this guideline is violated in systems consisting of a hyperexponential stage. From a comparative study of several two-stage systems it is shown that the unusual unbalancing behaviour of the hyperexponential distribution is due neither to its negative memory nor to any abnormality in the plot of its higher moments but to the fact that it is a composite distribution.