Shifting Economies Craft Production to the Flexible Factory Classic Reprint

Excerpt from Shifting Economies: Craft Production to the Flexible Factory

The sequence ends with the production model if there is only one job one product, one customer. In this case, the product and the process needed to make it are customized in an organization one might call a job shop, by workers that in many ways resemble the craftsmen or artisans who made a variety of products before the advent of the modern factory in the l8o0s. If there is more than one potential customer, a firm can create different types of organizations aimed at replicating this design with varying degrees of efficiency and output volumes, from a few (batch production) to many (mass production). Developing a mass production or replication system may require a great deal of thought and money. Once this system is in place, the final production process might be relatively simple, such as pressing a phonograph record or copying a software program, or relatively difficult, such as assembling an automobile or a video recorder. Difficulty depends on the nature and number of the components, production or assembly processes, customer requirements, and other factors.

From the customers' point of view, a product is customized only if it istailored for their specific needs. From the producers' point of view, however, there are several options. Some new designs they customize or make from scratch, while in others producers reuse designs, components, tools, processes, or particular people from other projects. Volume of replication, reuse or non reuse of components, process characteristics, as well as the coordination mechanisms needed to manage design and production, are some variables distinguishing different types of product-development and production organizations. These distinctions are important because observers from several fields, as well as managers, have used them for descriptive as well as prescriptive purposes to explain the principles behind both job shops and factories, and thus the logic which suggests what processes and methods of organization seem most appropriate for particular situations.

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