The design and management of accurate processes are the foundation to any operation. Effective process design is the basis for all successful operations management practices; therefore it is important to fully understand it.
What is Process Design?
Process design involves understanding the characteristics of the product to determine the appropriate manufacturing techniques; it “translates product design into the technical knowledge, organizational capabilities and operating processes needed to create the product” (Pisano, 1997)
A process is normally designed around 2 major factors of what needs to be delivered.
1. Volume – this could be high or low
2. Variety – this could be small or large
Objectives of Process Design …show more content…
Companies which have a high demand of product/services will want to design processes which provide minimum throughout times and processes that meet the supply/demand.
Dependability as a process objective
A process that is designed to be dependable will provide dependable process resources and also reliable process output timings and volume. This will in turn benefit the organization to provide on time deliveries, and also cause less disruption.
Flexibility as a process objection
A good process design will enable a company to process a wide range of products and services that can be delivered. A flexible will process design will also make change easy of processing states.
Cost as a process objective
Typical process design objectives include capacity to meet demand, and also eliminate process waste, which can be of many types: (Slack, Chambers, & Johnston, 2010)
• Excess capacity
• Excess process capability
• In process delays
• In process errors
• Inappropriate process inputs
VOLUME AND VARIETY
The most important factors when designing processes is volume and variety of the products and services that it …show more content…
Continuous Process
2. Assembly Line Process
3. Batch Process
4. Project Process
CONTINUOUS
Continuous Processes are designed in a way that they can run for 24 hours, 7 days a week and may only be stopped for maintenance proposes. As they are highly automated and operate at very high volumes, it is very difficult to change over from producing one type of product to another. (Paton, Clegg, Hsuan, & Pilkinton, 2011)
Examples of continuous production industries are the Beer Industry, Paper, Electricity Companies, etc.
Figure 2: Continuous Water Treatment Process (Slack, Chambers, & Johnston, 2010)
ASSEMBLY LINE PROCESSES
Assembly lines are recognized by the preplanned sequence of operations, which move items from one stage to the next. They are setup to produce discrete products such as Cars, washing machines, mobile phones, etc.
Assembly lines are designed to be very efficient and produce high volumes of standardized products. This is also known as Mass