Understanding Job Shop Manufacturing
Marples Gears runs a job shop manufacturing system style production, meaning that we manufacture small to medium run custom orders for our clients in order to meet their gear and machined component needs. Due to the customization of the components being manufactured job shops typically are business-to-business type sales. The opposite of a job shop is called a flow shop which is utilized in higher production manufacturing where each stage of manufacturing happens in the exact same order every time in the exact same machine.
This type of machine shop also only will make components once the order has been placed. So if a client needs part quickly unless they have ordered from the shop before and they had extra from a previous run the customer will be subject to a full production lead time.
A job shop system produces a highly flexible production environment, but does create scheduling issues. The flexibility of the job allows all of the various batches to run through the shop in unique sequences. In a job shop, after each task is complete, machines and staff will move onto an entirely new component. Staff must be highly skilled to accommodate the ever-changing requirements of each batch while machines have to be much less specialized in order to meet the needs of the shop. While in some cases job shop may run multiple batches of the same component in a row, typically staff and equipment change to produce a different component. The flexibility of a machine shop also benefits the organization in terms of robustness of machine failures. If one machine in a flow shop crashes the entire production line is affected whereas in a job shop the job will just be moved to a different machine while the crashed machine is repaired.
Downsides to job shop manufacturing are the higher production cost and longer production lead times. Higher production cost comes from two things; one the fact that a job will not move onto the next operation until the entire batch is completed through that task, and another that if a machine is not ready to accept the components it must wait in a que to go into the machine. This also leads to longer production lead times.
