Let's Make! The Machinery Behind Manufacturing

Instructional Knowledge | Time to read: 3 mins

Operations is known to be synonymous with production and the making of products. Given the prior insights pieces covering aspects of Strategy and balancing the customer centricity with vendor rationalisations; we finally boil down to what is in a firm's hand i.e. the making of the product. 

Once the requisite raw materials are procured and received each workstation is assigned with the appropriate quantity. A manufacturing unit predominantly has an architectural layout that replicates the procedural method of making the product. 

There are several different manufacturing styles and layouts depending on the product type and the nature of demand. There's MTS (Made to Stock), to make and keep for storage for immediate replenishment. There's MTO (Made to Order), to make only once an order is received. There's ATO (Assemble to Order) etc. 

So, now that the style is in place of course there's a big question on the unit's size and location. Obviously it has to be designed keeping in mind the frequency of orders and the nature of business expansion. Layouts require designs to be in tandem with the proximity to the vendor/customer. It also needs to meet the local Government norms in terms of safety(think: fire extinguishers, different allocations for hazardous areas, internal material handling equipment's movement to miss any fatalities etc.)

With all of this in place, it is paramount that the product's raw materials' stock is also kept at either the unit's internal racking for it to be made available to the workstation or follows a JIT mechanism in the closest nearby vendor/warehouse. These workstations are meant to have the respective work instruction in the form of a Standard Operating Process(preferably in the language they understand-local language and completely simple for usage). It is important to note that they are followed and revised at a great frequency.

With all this pre-requisite in place it is now time to make! The making time for each workstation should be synchronous keeping in mind the respective bottlenecks. Theory of Constraints and Critical Chain concepts demand that the synchronisation is best met when the most time consuming task is made to begin first, implying that the rest of the activities follow suit. Practically this becomes a daunting task when activities mid-way consume a longer timeline. In these cases it's practical to ensure that the lesser time-consuming activities do not pile up their process makes. Essentially, each task (T1, T2, T3...) are distributed across linear workstations (for ease of understanding-this can be multi-modal in nature). Each task's operator would be accountable to follow the procedures and the timelines so the next isn't kept waiting and idle. When T2 takes longer than T3, and T1 then both T3 will have to be kept waiting while T1 will keep passing on already completed tasks of T1. The strain for W2 increases with the influx from W1 while W3 would be kept idle. Firms tend to either re-allocate other tasks to W3 and W2 to keep them busy. Instead, it would benefit firms if they would rather free up the operators instead. The techniques of Kanban and two bin systems are meant to ensure only the required parts are at the raw material stage of W1. The rest is carried out by pickers instead. 

Making of some products require slight interventions of machines so major electricity consumptions and utilities as well as water as a resource would be utilised during the make process. This would rather make for alternate sustainable measures to reduce the costs incurred; which firms tend to capitalise upon; while less focus is on streamlining the process and strengthening the product.

Many firms tend to compartmentalise manufacturing upto the packaging phase. Some include it and demarcate it upto the ready for despatch areas. Packaging is another area that firms concentrate upon shaving off costs. 

Once made the product is ready for shipment to the customer's end. In this case the customer is the next operator for the next task to be completed upon.

A great amount of the manufacturing alterations in the product come via a feedback from the customer side. While the process alterations come from a W2 for T1 and sometimes vice versa. 

With all this in mind given the repetitive activities in the manufacturing tasks the operators tend to get better with time and quicker however it is also important for job rotation to occur so as to understand and respect the work of each other. Firms also automate these tasks after a period of time. These are areas that ensure a trade-off as an investment in the long run. 

So keeping these pointers in mind would benefit firms in the long-run. If you're one of them, well just go ahead and make!