Job production

Job production, sometimes called jobbing or one-off production, involves producing custom work, such as a one-off product for a specific customer or a small batch of work in quantities usually less than those of mass-market products. It is the oldest form of production. Individual products are made, with probably not a lot of standardized parts in it. With batch production and flow production it is one of the three main production methods.

Job production is most often associated with classical craft production, small firms (making railings for a specific house, building/repairing a computer for a specific customer, making flower arrangements for a specific wedding etc.) but large firms use job production too. Examples include:

• Designing and implementing an advertising campaign
• Auditing the accounts of a large public limited company
• Building a new factory
• Installing machinery in a factory
• Machining a batch of parts per a CAD drawing supplied by a customer
• Building the Golden Gate bridge

Fabrication shops and machine shops whose work is primarily of the job production type are often called job shops. The associated people or corporations are sometimes called jobbers.

Job production is, in essence, manufacturing on a contract basis, and thus it forms a subset of the larger field of contract manufacturing. But the latter field also includes, in addition to jobbing, a higher level of outsourcing in which a product-line-owning company entrusts its entire production to a contractor, rather than just outsourcing parts of it.

Benefits and disadvantages

Key benefits of job production include:

• can provide emergency parts or services, such as quickly making a machine part that would take a long time to acquire otherwise
• can provide parts or services for machinery or systems that are otherwise not available, as when the original supplier no longer supports the product or goes out of business (orphaned)
• work is generally of a high quality
• a high level of customisation is possible to meet the customer's exact requirements
• significant flexibility is possible, especially when compared to mass production
• workers can be easily motivated due to the skilled nature of the work they are performing

Disadvantages include:

• higher cost of production
• re-engineering: sometimes engineering drawings or an engineering assessment, including calculations or specifications, needs to be made before the work can be done
• requires the use of specialist labour (compare with the repetitive, low-skilled jobs in mass production)
• slow compared to other methods (batch production and mass production)

Essential features

There are a number of features that should be implemented in a job production environment, they include:

• Clear definitions of objectives should be set.
• Clearly outlined decision making process.

See also

• Instant manufacturing
• Just In Time
• Lean manufacturing
• Manufacturing
• Odd job
• Piece work
• Outline of industrial organization