Manufacturing
Processes
Chapter Seven
McGraw-Hill/Irwin Copyright © 2014 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Learning Objectives
• LO7–1: Understand what a manufacturing process is.
• LO7–2: Explain how manufacturing processes are
organized.
• LO7–3: Analyze simple manufacturing processes.
Production Processes
• Production processes
are used to make any
manufactured item.
– Step 1 – Source the
parts needed
– Step 2 – Make the
product
– Step 3 – Deliver the
product
Production Process Terms
• Lead time – the time needed to respond to a
customer order
• Customer order decoupling point – where inventory
is positioned to allow entities in the supply chain to
operate independently
• Lean manufacturing – a means of achieving high
levels of customer service with minimal inventory
investment
Types of Firms
Make-to-Stock
• Serve customers from finished goods inventory
Assemble-to-Order
• Combine a number of preassembled modules to meet a customer’s specifications
Make-to-Order
• Make the customer’s product from raw materials, parts, and components
Engineer-to-Order
• Work with the customer to design and then make the product
Make-to-Stock
• Examples of products include the following:
– Televisions
– Clothing
– Packaged food products
• Essential issue in satisfying customers is to balance the
level of inventory against the level of customer service.
– Easy with unlimited inventory, but inventory costs money
– Trade-off between the costs of inventory and level of customer
service must be made.
• Use lean manufacturing to achieve higher service levels for
a given inventory investment.
Assemble-to-Order
• A primary task is to define a customer’s order in terms of
alternative components because these are carried in
inventory.
– An example is the way Dell Computer makes their desktop
computers.
• One capability required is a design that enables as much
flexibility as possible in combining components.
• There are significant advantages from moving the
customer order decoupling point from finished goods to
components.
Make-to-Order/Engineer-to-Order
• Boeing’s process for making commercial aircraft is an
example.
• Customer order decoupling point could be in either
raw materials at the manufacturing site or the
supplier inventory.
• Depending on how similar the products are, it might
not even be possible to preorder parts.
How Production Processes are
Organized
• Project: the product remains in a fixed location
– Manufacturing equipment is moved to the product.
• Workcenter (job shop): similar equipment or functions are
grouped together
• Manufacturing cell: a dedicated area where products that
are similar in processing requirements are produced
• Assembly line: work processes are arranged according to the
progressive steps by which the product is made
• Continuous process: assembly line only the flow is
continuous such as with liquids
Product–Process Matrix: Framework
Describing Layout Strategies
Production System Design
Project Layout
• The product remains in a fixed location.
• A high degree of task ordering is common.
• A project layout may be developed by arranging materials according to
their assembly priority.
Workcenter
• Most common approach to developing this type of layout is to arrange
workcenters in a way that optimizes the movement of material.
• Optimal placement often means placing workcenters with large
interdepartmental traffic adjacent to each other.
• Sometimes is referred to as a department and is focused on a particular
type of operation.
Production System Design
Manufacturing Cell
• Formed by allocating dissimilar machines to cells that
are designed to work on similar products (shape,
processing, etc.)
Assembly Line and Continuous
Layout
• Designed for the special purpose of building a product
by going through a series of progressive steps
Break-Even Analysis
• Defined as standard approach to choosing among alternative
processes or equipment.
• Model seeks to determine the point in units produced where
a company will start making profit on the process.
• Model seeks to determine the point in units produced where
total revenue and total cost are equal.
Purchase cost of process or equipment
Breakeven Demand
Price per unit - Cost per unit
or
Total fixed costs of process or equipment
Unit price to customer - Variable cost per unit
Manufacturing Process Flow Design
• Manufacturing process flow design – a method
to evaluate the specific processes that material
follow as they move through the plant
• Focus should be on the identification of
activities that can be minimized or eliminated
– Movement and storage
– The fewer the moves, delays, and storage, the better
the flow
The Charts
• Assembly drawing: an exploded view of the product showing
its component parts
• Assembly chart: defines how parts go together, their order of
assembly, and overall flow pattern
• Operation and route sheet: specifies operations and process
routing
• Process flowchart: denotes what happens to the product as
it progresses through the production facility