Methods of Production Flashcards
What is Job Production?
Used when a firm manufactures individual, unique products.
Each product has a unique design based upon the customer’s specification.
What do Job production products often require?
Highly skilled labour and have a high labour-to-capital ratio - can be very labour intensive.
What is an advantage of Job production?
High quality products made.
What is a disadvantage of Job production?
Usually expensive and take a long time.
What is the opposite of Job Production?
Flow Production
What is Flow Production?
All products are identical and the aim is to produce as many as possible along an assembly line.
What has to happen for Flow Production to be efficient?
Production has to be continuous with no stoppages.
What is the aim of Flow production?
To gain from economies of scale and so have low average unit cost to allow competitive prices.
What do Modern flow production techniques use?
Robots to do most of the work.
What type of products is Flow production used for?
Mass-market products.
Flow production is highly capital-intensive and may also require a lot of space for product storage.
