Production, Productivity, & Efficency Flashcards
What is production?
The transformation of resources into finished goods or services
total output produced
What are the 4 methods of production?
Job
Batch
Flow
Cell
What is job production?
When manufacturers produce one product at a time as ordered by the customer
What are advantages of job production?
High quality products
Highly skilled and motivated workers
Customisable products
Disadvantages of job production?
Production is slow
Labour costa are high
What is batch production?
Where groups of the same products are produced as a batch
Advantages of Batch production?
Workers can specialise
Production can take place as previous batch starts to run out
Benefit form economies of scale
Disadvantage of batch production?
Requires careful consideration to avoid shortages
Money is tied up in stock
Products/resources need to be stored
What is flow production?
Continuous manufacturing of standardised products on a production line
Advantages of flow production?
Low unit costs (economies of scale)
Rapid production
Highly automated
Disadvantages of flow production?
Customisation is difficult
Capital equipment can be expensive
Where are you more likely to use flow production?
Where the selling prices is a key driver of consumer demand as unit costa are minimised
Where are you more likely to use job and batch?
Where demand is driven by quality or where customisation is required
what is cell production?
work is organised into teams and each given a responsibility of doing part of production process
what is productivity?
output per input per hour
