What Is A Job Shop
Manufacturing businesses come in a variety of types
. Manufacturers could be labeled as made to order manufacturer, engineer to order, make to stock, build to order and other descriptive terms. Some business are a hybrid of multiple types including made to order and build to order. Job shops can be any one or a multiple of these types but the overall idea is a job shop makes some sort of product.
A job shop is a type of manufacturing process structure where batches of a variety of custom products are made. In the process flow for manufacturing, most of the products produced require a unique set-up and sequencing of processing steps. Examples of a job shop include a sheet metal, machine tool shop, a factory machining center, paint shops, a commercial printing shop, and other manufacturers that make custom products. This type of job shop can be made to order and engineer to order shop.
LAYOUT In the job shop there are few to many machines and those pieces of equipment can vary from being very similar to very unique. Many times these machines are grouped in such a way that a department has work centers, and work centers have machines. Similar equipment or functions are grouped together, such as all drill presses in one area and grinding machines in another in a process layout. A typical factory layout would be designed in such a way to minimize material handling, cost and work in process. Unlike production shops which produce standard products with specialized machines, job shops use general purpose equipment. Digital numerically controlled equipment, or CNC equipment, is often used to give manufacturing the flexibility to change set-ups on the various machines very quickly. Job shops compete on quality, speed of product delivery, customization, and new product introduction, but are unlikely to compete on price as few scale economies exist.
ROUTING As jobs come in the door at a manufacturing plant each job is sequenced to the work centers and machines that are required to produce the part. When an order arrives the part being worked on travels throughout the various areas according to a sequence of operations. Only a small subset of the machines are used for each job going through the shop because each job is unique. In order for scheduling to work properly this routing must accurately depict the set of machines and operations this job will go through. Scheduling defines these machines as resources.
EMPLOYEES Employees are key assets in a job shop and range from employees doing repetitive work to employees that are highly skilled craftsmen who operate multiple machines. Scheduling must take into account the finite resources of employees.
SCHEDULING A job is characterized by its route, its processing requirements, and its priority. In a job shop the mix of products is a key issue in deciding how and when to schedule jobs. Scheduling can come in many forms but the basic scheduling is finite forward, finite backwards and infinite backwards. There are variations on these scheduling mechanisms which each have their positive and negative results.
Capacity is difficult to measure in the manufacturing facility and depends on lot sizes, the complexity of jobs, the mix of jobs already scheduled, the ability to schedule work well, the number of machines and their condition, the quantity and quality of labor input, and any process improvements.
What type of work is done at a custom order manufacturing business?
This is a company which manufacturers both made-to-order parts and engineer-to-order custom products for a particular custom. They can also be a hybrid which makes custom products on a customer demand driven basis or they can have a product line in which they manufacturer, sell and/or distribute products which were made in house. Many manufacturers today began as job shops and grew into the other manufacturing processes as volume allowed. The job shop allows entrepreneurs the most flexibility in making a variety of products to meet customer quality and service standards.
Some examples include sheet metal shops, stamping houses, machine shops, wood working, plastics and many other industries which need parts manufactured. When we continue talking about scheduling we are not going to spend too much time on large product manufacturers, i.e. cars, trucks and other assembly line process. Assembly line processes need to be handled differently then most standard job shops.
The basic process from getting a job from a customer to shipment is
RFQ is submitted
Job shop provides an estimating and quote to the buyer
Buyer awards the RFQ
A sales order is created
A work order is created to produce the requirements
THe Work order is scheduled
Work Order is tracked and closed as the part is manufactured
Job is shipped to customer
As shown, there are a lot of steps a job goes through during a normal life cycle of a made-to-order part. You can see that the scheduling is in the middle of the process, but is very critical in order to get the job out on time.
by: David Ferguson
Job Interviews: An Interviewer's Guide Do You Want Your Team Members To "just Get The Job Done"? How To Get A Sales Job Without Sales Experience Finding Information With A Reverse Email Search Mobile Development Jobs Recent Trends & Challenges How To Earn Lots Of Money By Optimizing Your Blog For Search Engines Company Search - Making Sure People Know Your Company Exists Corporation Search - Making Your Corporation Stand Out Against The Crowd Is Medical Transcription The Right Career Choice For You? Why Choose Working From Home Jobs? by:Mathias Conner How to Book an All-Inclusive Caribbean Vacation Why Bahamas All-Inclusive Vacations Are Better A new year is the time for a new approach to work