Operation Management - Process choice and Layout planning

PROCESS CHOICE Characteristics of project, jobbing, batch, flow, and process production systems, with examples for each. Project, jobbing, batch, flow and process production are the process types used in manufacturing. The figure below shows the trade off between volume and variety of outputs. In choosing one of these systems, high volume means low variety and high variety means low volume. (see figure 1) Project processes - The essence of project processes is that they are all …

…for high volume and the low staff skill levels needed. An example is a canteen, in which the sequence of customers requirements is generally common for all customers. As shown in the figure below, volume and variety have different effects on the layout's flow. When volume is very high and variety very low, continuous flow must be the major issue, when variety is very high and volume very low flow should be intermittent. (see figure 2)