Principles of Mass and Flow Production - Essay Example

?Management To what extent can improvements in productive flow and product quality lead to an increase in sales and profit? The product flow and quality are closely related aspects of business development that act in collaboration while defining the organisational profits and sales. The changes and improvements to a product quality that are implemented on the manufacturing flow possess have a direct impact on sales and profits. This is because the two factors are the prominent factors determining the sales and numbers. This paper will view the two aspects i.e. product flow and quality, and determine how their association can be harnessed to promote sales as well as profits. Business organisations exist with a goal of maintaining continuous improvement and productivity; a goal that can only be achieved if high sales and profits are maintained. Enhanced sales and profits provide adequate opportunities and resources to the manufacturers that they apply for innovation and growth. Enhanced innovation enables manufacturers to provide superior and lean quality products that attract customers. Most companies strive to leverage operational improvements into strategies that transform the company (Williams, Haslam and Williams, 1992). Production flow defines the concept of mass production. It is the idea of producing large quantities that are manufactured through application of high standardised methods. Production flow is applied by many companies because it promotes the production process; it is easier and quicker. The introduction bit of the process is cumbersome and difficult although it becomes easier once the production flow attains momentum. Owing to its emphasis on production of large quantities of commodities, production flow relies on the machinery for most of its roles. This implies that surmountable resources require to be allocated in the purchase, training and maintenance for the strategy to be efficient. Machines involved in this process should be selected and handled carefully to ensure that they are not vulnerable to wear and tear. This may lead to loss in terms of maintenance and replacement costs (Womack, Jones and Roos, 1990). According to Oulton (1987), mass production has its merits as well as demerits. Installation of the machinery required for production requires abundant financial resources. However, once the machinery has been installed, organisations save considerable financial resources, especially the money required in hiring and maintenance of human labour (Gilchrist, 1971). The work output is normally high. The accuracy levels are also high provided the machines are maintained in a superb working form. Machines are also capable of abiding to the set deadlines with no requirement for extensions. Abiding to the performance deadline is enhanced by the presence of assembly lines that allows continuous and consistent flow of manufactured products. This enhances output as well as the quality of the products produced in the long term, leading to increased sales and profits. Investing in production flow process benefits the manufacturer due to improved sales, leading to the increase in profits. Quality can be defined as the ability of a product or service to fulfil the client needs or expectations. Therefore, it can be measured depending on the level that the quality of a product satisfies the expectations of a consumer. High quality products have superior features that satisfy the consumer needs while the features of low quality products do not correspond to the needs of the consumer. For instance, the features that determine the quality of mechanical products include appearance, safety and reliability. Product quality improvement should consider the customer’s needs and expectations, extent of fulfilment of both national and international regulations and the competitiveness of the product (Williams, Haslam and Williams, 1993). Improving the product quality will not only satisfy the consumer needs; more customers will be attracted leading to increased sales as well as profits. Maintenance of high product quality creates loyalty among customers. Customers will be willing to invest and spend their monies in the organisation provided that they are assured of high quality products or services. This implies that the organisation is able to maintain high sale-level even in fierce competitive environment if measures enhancing the customer loyalty are maintained or enhanced. The organisation may also take advantage of the customer loyalty to increase prices at considerable levels while at the same time improving the quality of the products. This is especially practical when the products are being introduced in the market for the first time. The prices are initially maintained low until the product attains a considerable market share. However, this is only practical if the quality of the products is maintained high and the consumers do not resent about the quality. Sales and profits are the crucial goals defining the existence of an organisation. If the organisational managers do not strive to achieve goals, the company is bound to consume its initial capital and eventually fail. This is why surmountable energy is applied in the achievement of the two factors through searching for new methods suitable for promoting sales and profits. One of the prominent strategies used to improve sales and profits is cutting the labour costs, production cost or other outside costs. However, application of these strategies is not always enough. Therefore, organisations look for other strategies suitable for improving sales as well as profits. Sales are determined by a range of factors. The crucial factor determining sale levels is pricing. The price of a product sold to customer is a function of the cost of production (Woollard, 1954). Therefore, the cheaper the production cost, the cheaper it is to sell products while still maintaining the gross margin. This makes the products to be more appealing to customers, thus driving the sales up. To reduce the production costs, the manufacturers should first reduce the labour cost through transferring the production activities to countries that have low wages and salaries. However, this should be carried-out carefully and strategically as it may hamper the quality of the company products. The most suitable strategy for maintaining or improving the quality of the company products while reducing the cost of production is improvement of the productive flow. This ensures that resources are not wasted while the quality of the products remains high. Continuous improvement requires the organisations to meet the demand while improving productivity and production capacity (Haslam, Neale and Johal, 2000). Some of the strategies undertaken in maintaining continuous productivity include ensuring lean production, total production maintenance, set up reduction, value streaming mapping and flow manufacturing among others. Lean production involves utilising the existing resources in production while eliminating other invaluable activities. Most manufactures works to eliminate the traditional inefficient production functions in curbing increased competition that reduces sales and profits. Traditional methods lead to overproduction. To curb the challenge, most manufacturers apply the modern strategies that manufactures only what is required by customers. Application of lean strategy leads to the establishment of an approach for elimination of wastes and creation of production flow within organisations. According to The National Institute of Standards and Technology (2012), the benefits accrued from application of lean strategy include reduction of cycle time, curtailing the inventories, cost reduction, improvement in lead times, hiking the production capacity, quality, productivity and profits (NIST, 2012). The set-up reduction involves application of principles capable of reducing the change over time involved in the transition of the production activities. Application of the set-up reduction time enables companies to design low strategies capable of reducing changeover time as well as curtailing time wastage. This assists the organisation in satisfying the customer needs of high quality goods, low-cost products and quick delivery without additional expenses related to excess inventories. Generally, set-up reduction leads to increase in flexibility, production flow and reduces the set-up time (NIST, 2012). Another strategy that can be applied in improving the sales and profits is total productive maintenance (NIST, 2012). This strategy yearns to maximise the productivity of the equipments in the entire life. This strategy fosters an improvement-oriented environment characterised by safety, quality, cost and creativity. The success of this strategy is ensured through enhancing team work and participation among employees. This strategy maximises the effectiveness of the equipment while reducing the equipment down time as well as improving the quality and capacity. Enhancing the lifetime of a machine leads to numerous benefits that increase the sales and profits in business organisations. These benefits include improvement in the overall effectiveness of the machine, improved quality and reduction in maintenance expenditure. Value stream mapping helps in the creation of the information flow of organisational products or processes. This strategy enables companies to trace and follow up the movement of a product from manufacturing stage to the finished products as it is being floated into the market. This helps in the streamlining of the organisational products, thereby reducing time wastage as well as reduction in the operation costs. The reduced operation costs enhance the reduction in the product prices as well as increased output. Conclusion Improving the product flow and quality leads to a considerable increase in sales and profits. Increased production promotes the supply of more products in the market, leading to increased sales and profits if production meets demand. Enhanced quality leads to creation of client loyalty and long-term relationships. This helps in maintaining the existing customers as well as attracting new ones. Increased number of customers encourages organisations to improve on both quality and price thereby sustainably increasing sales and profits. References Gilchrist, R. (1971) Managing for profit: the added value concept, George Allen & Unwin, London. Haslam, C. Neale, A. & Johal, S. (2000) Economics in a business context, Business Press. Oulton, N. (1987) 'Plant closures and the productivity miracle in manufacturing' National Institute of Economic Research, pp. 53-59. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) (2012) Process improvements, viewed 08 Jan 2012 from . Williams, K., Haslam, C. & Williams, J. (1992) 'Ford versus Fordism: The Beginning of Mass Production?' in Work, employment and society. Williams, K. Haslam, C. & Williams, J. (1993) ‘The Myth of the Line: Ford’s production of the Model T at Highland Park 1909-1916’ Business history, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 67-85. Womack, J., Jones, D. & Roos, D. (1990) The machine that changed the world, Rawson Associates, pp. 21-47; 75-103; 138-168. Woollard, F.G. (1984) Principles of mass and flow production, London, Published for Mechanical Handling [by] Iliffe. Read More