- [Instructor] The method of production you choose will
depend heavily on the volume of production.
How many parts you need will help inform the scale.
Small scale production generally refers to manufacturing
that is done in more intensive per part human labor
often requiring highly skilled workers who can perform
a variety of tasks.
It may include specialized machinery
and combination with craftsmanship.
These goods are produced on the scale of handfuls
to hundreds of identical or similar items.
Small scale production methods can include 3D printing,
CNC of custom parts and vacuum forming for tray inserts.
At this scale, the design process is more agile and able
to adapt to changes in design as needed.
For example, with CNC of custom parts it takes much
less setup time per individual design and as necessary
can update and produce families, variations, or series
of similar but unique items.
With 3D printing you can print individual, unique, and
complex projects each design taking similar amounts of time
and resources to produce.
Each of these projects can be completely individual but
if you're managing your own equipment in house,
maintenance, down time, and those pesky shop goblins
have to be kept track of.
Complications arise from scaling up your process
from being boutique and custom.
This requires improvements and efficiency and
specialization of workers.
Scaling up from artisanal products can also require
switching up your production procedures by creating
products in larger batches or forming more continuous
assembly line.
For example, I had a client who had a particular product
from their offering go viral which is great for business
but production went from five orders a week to thousands.
This meant that the single item had to be duplicated
in many more orders of magnitude and fast.
Rapid growth means that space has to be made, processes
have to become more efficient, and specialized roles
have to be designated for different parts of the process.
Batch production groups similar tasks and needs
a more efficient assembly line.
Steps start forming order and dependencies.
This production progresses to a more continuous output.
Batches can range in size from dozens to hundreds and
are easier to scale than individual items.
As output scales up, the process becomes less agile
and able to withstand last minute changes.
If your bakery business starts producing cookies in the
thousands, recipe changes to the batter, or the size
of the cookie will effect the entire chain of production.
Mass production generally refers to manufacturing that is
done in a factory setting using rollers, along an assembly
line of highly specialized individual procedures in
sequence for the forming and assembly of parts
in a finished manufactured goods.
These goods are produced on a scale of hundreds of thousands
to millions of identical parts.
Examples of large or mass scale production are
injection molding machines for plastic components
like keyboard keys, and blow molding plastic drink bottles.
At this scale, it's a high investment of upfront cost
and lower cost per unit.
But it's a lot harder to change down the line.
You won't be able to change the tooling without
incurring significant cost.
So a considerable amount of engineering, testing,
and resources are involved in getting it right
the first time.
A downfall of this high speed assembly line is that a lot
of tasks are dependent on other tasks.
If a single procedure fails or a single part goes missing,
there goes the entire line until
the production can be addressed.
Even something as small as a USB cable can stop the entire
production of a car manufacturer because of the layers
in which the parts are assembled.
This can be a very expensive logistical mistake.
If you can't add the cable, you can't lay in the interior
which moves on down the line.
Additionally, it would be more expensive to store the cars
partially assembled.
This constant stream of production works well when all of
the parts are in place and working,
which isn't always the case.
This method is less agile to component breakdown
and needs management maintenance and efficiency experts
to keep everything running like a well oiled machine.