-Fundamental Rules for the selection and Planning of a Manufacturing Process

1. The process must assure a product that meets all design requirements of quality, function and reliability 2. Daily production requirement must be met 3. Full capacity of the machine and its tooling should be utilized 4. Idle operator and idle machine time must be reduced to minimum 5. The process must provide the maximum utilization of the minimum amount of material 6. The process should be flexible enough to accommodate reasonable changes in design 7. The process should be designed to eliminate any unnecessary operations and combine as many operations as are physically and economically practical 8. Capital expenditure that must be amortized over short periods must be kept as low as possible. 9. The process must be designed with the protection of both the operator and the workpiece in mind 10. The process should be developed so that the final product will be produced at a minimum cost to the enterprise as a whole SELECTION OF MANUFACTURING PROCESS The manufacturing process selected must be an economical balance of materials, manpower, product design, tooling and equipment, plant space, and many other factors influencing cost and practicality. The process must be selected in such a way that the produced product will be acceptable to the consumer functionally, economically and appearance-wise. FACTORS AFFECTING THE CHOICE OF MANUFACTURING PROCESS Following factors need to be considered before making a choice of Manufacturing process. a) Effect of volume/variety: This is one of the major considerations in selection of manufacturing process. When the volume is low and variety is high, intermittent process is most suitable and with increase in volume and reduction in variety continuous process become suitable. The following figure indicates the choice of process as a function of repetitiveness. Degree of repetitiveness is determined by dividing volume of goods by variety. b) Capacity of the plant: Projected sales volume is the key factor to make a choice between batch and line process. In case of line process, fixed costs are substantially higher than variable costs. The reverse is true for batch process thus at low volume it would
be cheaper to install and maintain a batch process and line process becomes economical at higher volumes. c) Lead time: - The continuous process normally yields faster deliveries as compared to batch process. Therefore lead-time and level of competition certainly influence the choice of production process. d) Flexibility and Efficiency: - The manufacturing process needs to be flexible enough to adapt contemplated changes and volume of production should be large enough to lower costs. Hence it is very important for entrepreneur to consider all above mentioned factors before taking a decision regarding the type of manufacturing process to be adopted as for as SSI are concerned they usually adopt batch processes due to low investment.