Process Types

Question 1

What are the Manufacturing Process Types?

Answer 1

Project 
Jobbing
Batch
Mass
Continuous

Question 2

What are the Service process types

Answer 2

professional services
service shops
mass services

Question 3

Define Process types

Answer 3

The ‘general approaches’ to designing and managing processes

Question 4

Define Project processes

Answer 4

deals with discrete products, often with a relatively long timescale between the completion of each item

Question 5

Characteristics of project processes

Answer 5

• unique, complex highly customised products
• long time interval between completion
• well-defined start and finish
• low volume and high variety
• activities in process ill-defined and uncertain
• coordination between different competencies
• transforming resources organised for each project
• random flow

Question 6

Examples for each manufacturing process type

Answer 6

Project
-software design, movie production, construction companies, and large fabrication operations

Jobbing
-made-to-measure tailors, many precision engineers i.e. specialist toolmakers, furniture restorers, and the printer producing tickets for local social events.

Batch
-machine tool manufacturing, the production of some special gourmet frozen foods, and the manufacture of component parts for automobiles.

Mass
-frozen food production, automatic packing lines, automobile plants, television factories and DVD production.

Continuous
-water processing, petrochemical refineries, electricity utilities, steel making and some paper making.

Question 7

Define Jobbing processes

Answer 7

each product has to share the operation’s resources with many others, but each one has different attention needs
-while in project processes each item has resources devoted more or less exclusively to it

Question 8

Characteristics of jobbing processes

Answer 8

• high variety and low volume
• low quantities (one or few)
• wide competence needed
• relatively complex
• produce physically smaller products
• less unpredictability
• one-offs
• jumbled flow

Question 9

Define Batch Processes

Answer 9

may look like jobbing processes, but do not have the same degree of variety.

Question 10

Characteristics of Batch processes

Answer 10

• large volume and low variety
• produce more than one product at a time, in batches
• if large batch, fairly repetitive
• a wide range of volume and variety levels
• standard product, but can be special manufacturing
• disconnected line flow

Question 11

Characteristics Mass process

Answer 11

• high volume and narrow variety (in fundamental product design)
• repetitive
• lower, more focused competence
• repetitive
• largely predictable
• connected line flow

Question 12

Characteristics of continuous processes

Answer 12

• higher volume and lower variety than mass
• longer operation times
• inflexible,
• expensive, captial intensive technologies
• highly predictable flow
• smooth flow

Question 13

What are the Service process types

Answer 13

Professional services
Service shops
Mass services

Question 14

What are professional services?

Answer 14

• high contact processes where customers spend a long time in the service process
• high levels of customisation
• people based
• low volume, many variation

Question 15

What are service shops

Answer 15

• levels of volume and variety between the extremes of professional and mass services
• mixes offront andback-office activities.

Question 16

What are Mass Services?

Answer 16

• have many customer transactions, involving limited contact time and little customization.
• high volume, few variety

Question 17

Examples of Service process types

Answer 17

Professional Services
-management consultants, lawyers’ practices, architects, doctors’ surgeries, auditors, health and safety inspectors, and some computer field service operations.

Service Shops
-banks, high street shops, holiday tour operators, car rental companies, schools, most restaurants, hotels and travel agents.

Mass Service
-supermarkets, a national rail network, an airport, telecommunications service, library, television station, the police service and the enquiry desk at a utility.

Question 18

define the product-process matrix

Answer 18

used for any type of process whether producing products or services

many of the more important elements of process design are strongly related to the volume– variety position of the process.

Question 19

What does the diagonal represent in the volume-variety matrix?

Answer 19

the most appropriate process design for any volume– variety position.

○ Processes on the right of the diagonal = lower volumes and higher variety= more flexibility, higher cost. 

○ processes on the left of the diagonal = higher volume and lower variety processes. = low flexibility

Question 20

what is process mapping

Answer 20

involves describing processes in terms of how the activities within the process relate to each other.

Question 21

Levels of process mapping

Answer 21

• highest level = input– transformation– output process
○ No details of how inputs are transformed into outputs are included.

• At a slightly lower or more detailed level, an outline process map (or chart), identifies the sequence of activities but only in a general way.
• At the more detailed level, all the activities are shown = ‘detailed process map’
• A ‘micro’ detailed process map could specify every single motion involved in each activity.

Question 22

Why is a process mapped?

Answer 22

to show the visibility of each activity to the customer

-highest level of visibility, are those activities that involve direct interaction

Question 23

define throughput time

Answer 23

is the elapsed time between an item entering the process and leaving it;

Question 24

define cycle time

Answer 24

is the average time between items being processed;

Question 25

define work-in-progress

Answer 25

is the number of items within the process at any point in time.

Question 26

define the work content

Answer 26

It is the total amount of work required to produce a unit of output.

Question 27

Throughput time equation

Answer 27

Throughput time = Work-in-progress * Cycle time

Question 28

define little’s law

Answer 28

(throughput time = work-in-progress × cycle time)

○ the average number of things in the system is the product of the average rate at which things leave the system and average time each one spends in the system.

Or, the average number of objects in a queue is the product of the entry rate and the average holding time.

Question 29

define a bottleneck

Answer 29

a process is the activity or stage where congestion occurs because the workload placed is greater than the capacity to cope with it.

Question 30

effect of bottlenecks

Answer 30

reduces the efficiency of a process as the other stages will be underloaded.

Question 31

define balancing

Answer 31

The activity of trying to allocate work equally between stages

• wasted time = balancing loss

Question 32

how to balance work time allocation

Answer 32

respect the ‘precedence’ of the individual tasks that make up the total work content of the job that the process is performing.
= using a ‘precedence diagram’