The production process may be a hard task to accomplish considering the need to meet all of the customer requirements and product specifications while constrained with costs and other managerial limitations. However, there are different ways of making the production process more efficient while lowering the input needed to run the process successfully. One of such ways is forming a process strategy. In fact, it has an objective of building an efficient production process.
There are some issues that any process strategy focuses on. How to produce a product or provide a service that meets customer requirements or transcends them? While meeting customer’s requirements, how to also meet cost restraints and managerial goals? Moreover, there are certain ways in which process strategy affects production efficiency, versatility, production process’ cost, and the final product’s quality. The overall effectiveness of production depends on whether all questions are answered. If the answers are given, some focuses may be increased and the ones that are not needed for an individual facility may be decreased. This allows production process to use all of its assets to their fullest.
Process strategy may be applied within certain basic strategies. Those are process focus, repetitive focus, product focus, and mass customization. The first of the mentioned strategies has a number of characteristics. It generally includes facilities that are organized around specific activities and processes. Further follows the involvement of minimally utilized general purpose equipment and skilled personnel. The resulting product of such strategy is described by its high flexibility while requiring higher inputs. Planning and scheduling in the framework of such strategy becomes formidable because of the variations of product flows.
Repetitive focus often has facilities organized in assembly lines which are made in advance partly or wholly. Modules of such production mechanism may be combined to provide different output options. Unlike process-focused facilities, repetitive-focused facilities are less flexible, although possessing a higher output ratio.
Product-focused facilities are organized by the product they are producing. The product comes in large volumes although there are much fewer varieties to it. The processes are significantly more prolonged which allows for higher efficiency. The costs of process-focused productions are generally fixed high while remaining low in variables. The working force used in such facilities usually possesses poorer skills.
Finally, mass customization is generally described as having a low-cost, rapid production process. The result of such production strategy is the satisfaction of increasingly unique customer desires. The main advantage of mass customization strategy lies in its ability to combine the flexibility of process-focused production with the efficiency that the product-focused facilities achieve.
To summarize, every production strategy ensures different advantages, in turn having certain shortages. While some strategies are focused on high-volume production, others focus on providing the customer with high-quality products, though requiring more skilled labor and increased intervals between production cycles. The choice of any production strategy mainly depends on the type of product or service that a facility is aiming at. This allows production strategies to be a crucial asset in preparing facilities for launching. Correctly chosen production strategy will ensure that the facility will have an efficient input to output ratio while providing customers with a product that they are expecting to receive.