ABSTRACT
The manufacturing environment can be thought of as either a system or an entity, since it is made up of components that have been brought together to work toward a certain goal. This chapter presents in-depth information, analysis, and numerical examples related to processes ongoing in a manufacturing environment.
Factors of production are the input to a company's production function. Operational processes, on the other hand, refer to the transformational stage. The outputs are the final goods or services. Although every link in this chain is crucially vital, the operational processes — the procedures or the actions that convert inputs into outputs — might be the most fundamental one.
The operational processes of sourcing, manufacturing, and delivering are the three primary focuses of a production plan, whether they are conducted by humans or machines. It is possible to categorize a manufacturing process or environment in a variety of diverse ways, depending on factors such as the process type, the raw materials used, the product flow, and the product volume. For instance, to produce a physical output, a manufacturing process needs to source and store components, as well as other relevant factors of production. These stored components are also known as stocks or inventories of materials. The level of inventory might be a way to classify a manufacturing environment. Manufacturing processes can also be broken down into two primary categories: job type and flow type. The movement of a product from one stage of production to the next is referred to as ‘flow’ in the context of the manufacturing process. Consequently, a production planner can see two types of operations within a manufacturing environment: A process-oriented operation or a product-oriented operation. These various sorts of classifications that are used in manufacturing are simplistic attempts to describe the relationship between the process and the product. On the other hand, it is beneficial for the production planners to name a manufacturing process so that they might expect probable operational problems, such as bottlenecks.
