Booklet 7: Productivity and Investment Flashcards
What is Job production?
Term used to describe a situation where the firm produces a one-off product for a particular customer.
Advantages of Job production.
- Products are tailor-made for their customers.
- Can often charge a higher price.
- Easier to motivate workers.
Disadvantages of Job production.
- Production process can be quite slow.
- It requires specialist labour, harder to find and more expensive.
- Increases the average cost of production, no opportunities from economies of scale.
What is Batch production?
Batch production is the production of batches of similar products in large quantities.
Advantages of Batch production.
- Allows use of economies of scale.
- It reduces the need for a skilled and flexible workforce.
- Flexibility in production as machines can be reset.
Disadvantages of Batch production.
- Products cannot be customised.
- More storage space is required to accommodate stock.
- Less variety of work, tasks may not be motivating affecting morale and productivity of workers.
What is Flow production?
Is a process of passing componenets/partly produced products from one stage of production to another in a regular flow.
Advantages of Flow production.
- Robots can work 24/7
- Capital intensive (wide use of machinery)
- Benefit from economies of scale.
Disadvantages of Flow production.
- Loss of flexibility- products are all the same.
- Very expensive to set up.
- Repetitive nature of the work- less likely to be motivated which may affect productivity.
What is Cell production?
Cell production is a situation in which the flow production line is subdivided into a number of self-contained units. Each cell (or team) is responsible for a part of the finished product and, instead of each team member undertaking only one specific task, all team members are skilled at a number of likes, which provides a means for job rotation.
Advantages of Cell Production.
- Greater worker motivation, team working, and variety of work.
- Quality improvements- ‘ownership’ for quality.
- Workers become multi-skilled.
Disadvantages of Cell Production.
- Does not allow for the same intensive use of machiney as with flow production.
- Switching to cell production may lead to inefficiencies.
What is Lean Production?
Lean Production is a method of production that attempts to eliminate waste while maintaining quality and/or minimise activities that do not add value to the production process.
Advantages of Lean Production.
- Reduction in waste.
- Multi-skilled staff with each having increased participation, and increasing motivation.
- Faster new product development as flexible production methods allow a firm to be able to change products quickly.
- Should speed up production.
Disadvantages of Lean Production.
- Takes time and money.
- It May require additional training.
- The advantages of bulk buying are lost.
- It requires a high degree of delegation and organisation.
