Job, batch and flow production

In one paragraph

You can make one thing at a time to order, make groups of identical things, or run a continuous line. The more identical the output, the cheaper each one is and the less you can vary it.

Job production — one item at a time, made to the customer's specification. A wedding cake, a bespoke kitchen, an architect's design. Highly flexible, high skill, high cost per unit.

Batch production — a quantity of identical items, then a changeover to a different batch. A bakery making one hundred white loaves then switching to wholemeal. More efficient than job, and the changeover time is dead time.

Flow production — continuous, standardised, usually mechanised. Bottling, car assembly. Very low cost per unit, very high set-up cost, and very hard to change.

The trade-off

Moving from job towards flow buys lower unit cost and gives up flexibility and, usually, the ability to charge a premium. Moving the other way buys the ability to charge for bespoke work and gives up scale.

Neither is better. A business that competes on price needs to move towards flow; one that competes on being exactly right for the customer must not.

How to actually use it

• Look at where you actually sit versus where you charge as though you sit. Plenty of small firms do genuinely bespoke job production and price it like batch.
• If changeovers eat your day, that is the batch-production tax. Reducing changeover time is often a bigger win than working faster.

Where it breaks down

• Modern manufacturing blurs the line — mass customisation produces personalised output on a flow line, which the three categories do not describe well.

If you are being examined on it

Justify the method against the product and the market in the case. A bespoke, low-volume, high-price product on a flow line is the wrong answer however efficient it sounds.

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