When making things there are three basic types of production, one off, which is generally when only one specialist item is required and it would be built by a craftsman.. An example of this could be a individually made piece of jewellery where there would only be one in the world. This type of production as you can well imagine is very labour intensive and therefore VERY expensive.

This is cheaper than one off production and would be used if about 1000 items needed to be made. The batch that is being made would use ordinary machines which were set up to complete an particular task when the required number were made the machines would be set up to perform a different task. One example of this might be floor board manufacture. A small joinery company might work out that it could sell 10,000 metres of floor boarding every month and 2000 windows of a certain size. It may also have worked out that it could sell 20,000 metres of skirting board. At the beginning of the month it would set the machinery to suit making floor boards (this might take a whole day to set the machines up to do this task), once the machines are ready the factory would produce 10,000 metres of floor boards which might take a week to make. Once the floorboards are made the factory might spend another day setting up the machines to make window frames. Once set they would produce 2000 window frames which may also take a week. Once made the machines would be set up to produce skirting board and after say 4 days all the skirting boards may be ready. This means that the factory has three months sales (1 month of floor boards, one month of skirting board and one month of window frames) and it has only taken three weeks to set up and make. If they know they are going to sell all these items (market research would tell them that they are as well as keeping records of past sales) then they have some time left to make specialist items.

It would be silly if the factory spent a day setting machines to cut boards and only made one metre (taking say a minute) and then spending another day setting machines to make something else. The amount of time not making items would cause the factory to go out of business.

Making cars is a good example. Another is making aluminium drinks cans. Mass production is when a lot of items are going to be made over a long period of time and the machines being used need to be specially made

Obviously machines being made for specialist tasks are VERY expensive so it is vital that the amount of objects being made is considerable so that the initial cost of the machines will be recovered in profits from selling the cars or cans or whatever it is.

It is important that the object being made is so designed that it lends itself to more than one off production. This may mean that design taken from an original ‘one off’ is changed so that it is easier and cheaper to make in batches. A good example of this is an original painting. The original is expensive, but copies are far less expensive. All it needs is a good photograph that can be copied on a printing machine to produce a similar effect. If the original frame of the painting was carved wood it would be quite possible to make a plastic mould of the frame and produce cheap plastic copies by injection moulding. The end result is cheap similar looking copies.

Other examples of this type of production could be wood effect plastic sheeting for covering walls. Wallpapers that look like wooden panels. Imitation is not always to make objects cheaper and more quickly. It could be to save resources (plastic wood instead of using real timber which means cutting down forests). Or imitation animal fur to save endangered species.

It would be foolish to buy a lot of specialist machines to make something if you couldn’t sell the product. For this reason market research should be carried out to ensure that people want the product before it is made.

Once a market has been established it could be a good idea to advertise to make more people aware and hence sell more.

Once on the market you may need to give the consumer advice on how the article should be used and if there are any dangers with it, or if it could be recycled. Once all the pre-making things have been sorted it is vital to know what sort of techniques can be used to produce articles.

This technique uses computer software to perform a range of tasks, not just drawing. For example if you design a beam and tell the computer the size and what it is made of it will tell you how much weight it will hold. (Useful if you design houses and you would like to know if the roof will hold a lot of weight when it snows). CAD also allows you to simulate movement. For example if you design a bike with a different type of brake, you can design it on screen and get the programme to test to see if it works before you start to make it (It would be sad if you made loads and they didn’t work, people would want their money back). Advantage – tests are MUCH cheaper.

CAM (Computer Aided Manufacturing) This is a process where a machine has an on board computer and it can be controlled. You programme the computer to move the machine tools in a certain way. You therefore can create a design using a computer and get the same computer to control the machines to make the design. Advantage, less waste from human error.

JIGS can be simple or complicated. A simple jig could be a piece of metal with holes drilled in it. This jig is then placed over other pieces of material and the holes in it are used to guile a drill in the exact pattern. If the same jig is used, the same pattern would be made every time. In its most complicated form a jig could be a complicated machine which holds all the panels of a car together in the right place before it is welded together.

MASTERS these usually are pieces of material which are an exact copy of a piece. They are usually painted a bright colour so that they are not used by accident. For example if I need hundreds of pieces of wood which were a particular length I could make one and paint it so that I didn’t cut it by mistake. Now instead of measuring every piece required I simply place my master on the wood and use it as a template for cutting. This cuts out measuring errors.

Circular saws, planing machines, drilling machines, lathes and drilling machines are all examples of simple machines which can speed op manufacture.

See if you could suggest a couple of modifications to your job so that you could make it more quickly if you were to make say 500. (That is batch production you know).