Flow Production

Aka continuous production or mass production, flow production enables products to be created in a series of steps.

Large amounts of goods produced and is highly capital intensive (machinery, automation)
Cars are massed produced for a large market using flow production.

Advantages of Flow Production

• Economies of scale
  
• Automated production lines save time and money
  
• Quality systems can be built into the production
  
  

Disadvantages of Flow Production

• Standard product produced (opposite of customised)
  
  
• High set-up costs of automated lines
  
  
• Repetitive and boring work
  
• Long production runs may produce more than is needed

Batch Production

Batch production enables items to be created in bulk (‘a batch’)
General purpose equipment and methods are used to produce small quantities of items that will be made and sold for a limited time only. Commonly used in food production

Advantages of Batch Production

• Allows flexible production
  
• Stocks of part-finished goods can be held and completed later
  
• Workers can specialise
  
  Disadvantages of Batch Production
  
• Production runs of small batches can be expensive to produce
  
• If production runs are different there may be extra costs and time delays in setting up different equipment

• Repetitive work for employees

Job Production

Job Production concentrates on producing one product from start to finish. Once one product is complete, another can begin.

It is extremely labour intensive

Some examples:

• Wedding dress
  
• Painting
  
• House extension
  

Advantages of Job Production:

• Easy to organise production
  
• Can customise orders
  
• ‘one-off’ orders can be accommodated
  
• Workers involved in entire production process from start to finish

Disadvantages of Job Production:

• Production costs likely to be high
  
• Production time may be longer
  
• Investment in machinery may be higher as specialist equipment may be needed
  

Total Quality Management

The main principle of TQM is that every employee is motivated to think about their personal contribution to providing quality to customers.

Every employee has a responsibility to ensure that a quality product leaves the workplace.

TQM relies on Kaizen - which is Japanese for continuous improvement. It means that everyone strives to making the product and the process better.

Quality Circles are a group of 6-12 people meet to identify quality problems, consider solutions & recommend suitable outcomes to management.

Members drawn from factory floor but include engineers, quality inspectors & salesmen to offer different viewpoints. (Managers may or may not be included)

Why use Quality Circles?
No-one knows production problems better than the workers. It also gives workers the chance to display their knowledge and skill

Quality Assurance

This process of quality control made the production workers aware of the standard which was required by the business.

Quality checks would be conducted at each stage of production.

The workers would operate as ateam to check and monitor the progress and accuracy of the production process.

Quality Assurance is based on prevention.

Quality Control

This process was a traditional method of quality control, whereby inspectors were required to spot check the final products.

Whenever sub-standard products were found it was the duty of the inspector to remove the items and discard them. This proved to be an extremely costly exercise as it resulted in a high level of wastage.

At no point in the process were the production workers involved in determining what was the expected level of quality.