introduction
Companies use three main manufacturing methods:
Job production, to make one-off products. This method is used if a customer orders a product be made to his or her own specifications as a special “job”, e.g. a made-to-measure wedding dress.
Batch production, to make fixed quantities of products in batches. This method is used if a range of similar products is being made (e.g. different flavours of ice-cream) or if the size of the market for a product is unclear. Machinery might be set to make one type of product (e.g. strawberry ice-cream) and is then reset to make another similar product (e.g. vanilla ice-cream).
Flow production, to make large numbers of identical products for which there is a mass market (e.g. computers or cars). The product moves continually along a production line, being assembled in bulk, with one part of the product being added at each stage.
Cadbury uses flow production to make hundreds of thousands of the same product with machinery moving each one along a production line. Cadbury also uses batch production – some machines are set to make different products at different times.
