Productivity Improvement

Production

Introduction and Adding Value

Organisations will adopt a variety of techniques to produce their goods or services. The technique adopted will depend on a number of factors including;

|  |  |

|The product or service |The type of organisation |

|Size of the organisation |The organisation’s resources |

|Legislation applicable to the organisation |Quantity of product or service. |

|Quality of product or service |  |

The most common methods of production include Line Production, Continuous flow production, Batch Production and Just in Time Production. The aim of all is to add value. Adding value is the process of converting the input to an output so that it’s desirability to the customer increases. The input is the product or service at the start of the production process. The output is the product or service at the end of the production process.

Line Production

Just as the name suggests line production is producing goods along a line of production. The goods will be passed along a line containing different stages. At each stage in the line the goods will be altered. Often a person/group of people will be responsible for just one stage in the process. Car assembly or fast food “drive thrus”, often adopt Line production as identical products are produced each day. Nowadays some organisations will employ robots rather than people to undertake the stages in line production. Robots are believed to be more efficient and unlike humans will not get bored and cause errors.

Continuous Flow Production (CFP)

This is simply adopting line production 24 hours day/seven days a week, using automatic equipment. The automatic equipment will operate in the same manner day in day out. The ability to work in this...