Product Design

One-off production: Designing and making a single product, such as a wedding cake, ring, suit, indivdual chair. A one-off production is designed and made for a specific person.

Batch production:  Products are identical and made at the same time in either large or small numbers. Once these products have been made, more of the same products may be made using the same equipment.

Mass production: The product goes through many stages of a production line. The workers and machines are responsible for making certain parts of the product. Workers tend to specialise in small range of tasks.

Continuous production: Products are produced over period of hours, days, weeks or even years. Production line never stops, running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Continuous production usually relies on high level automation. The work force is less skilled due to the high level of automation. The cost of the plant is high and is often designed to produce a limited range of products.  

Just-in-time production (JIT): Developed for products where there are lots of different options available. Modern car manufacture is usually organised around JIT. Each part of the product is planned to arrive on the production line just in time for its assembly. 

JIT involves working closely with suppliers. The company upholstering the car seats needs to know exactly how many are needed and when. Its the company's job to organise their delivery to the production line. This is often known as 'logistics'. JIT relies on ICT. As soon as a customer orders a particular product, this information is shared among the suppliers.

Advantages: Main advantage is that less money is tied up in the storage of parts. The disadvantage includes the late delivery of goods, which stops the production line. 

Electronic data interchange (EDI): Transfer of structured data from one computer system to another without human intervention. Eg: information and communications technology (ICT) can be used to transport data files between trading partners - such as a retailer and a manufacturer. 

Advantage of EDI is that it can shorten the supply chain by speeding up the time given to initiate and agree customer orders.