The basis of any type of industrial activity is the production process. It represents the associated stages of the transformation of the product of labor (materials, raw materials) into the final product, which is the goal of production.
The types of production processes are as diverse as these economic goals, as well as how to achieve them.
Classification of production processes.
Classification of production processes can be carried out on various grounds.
1. First of all, processes can be divided into main, auxiliary, servicing and management based on the role assigned to them in the general production system.
- The main ones - on the basis of which, in fact, the company's products are produced.
- Auxiliary - providing normal and uninterrupted operation of the main ones. For example, construction and installation works, energy generation, production of spare parts, components, additional tools. The results of their activities "support" the production of products that are the subject of specialization of the enterprise.
- Attendants provide the relationship between primary and secondary. These may include storage, logistics, loading and unloading, transport, control, and picking procedures.
- Managerial. These include those types of production processes that are designed to coordinate the entire work of the enterprise, regulate the compatibility of other processes, determine their feasibility and economic efficiency. Often they are closely intertwined with the main, auxiliary and servicing processes.
2. From the point of view of the nature of the processes, processes can be divided into discontinuous and continuous.
- Discontinuous (discrete), within which the stages of the production process are separated by time intervals.
- Continuous types of production processes imply the absence of gaps between technological operations.
3. According to the degree of mechanization, processes are divided into:
- Manual, carried out, as the name implies, without the use of mechanisms.
- Machine-manual groups of production processes involving the use of mechanisms or mechanized tools with the mandatory participation of a worker. For example, these include the processing of parts on a turning or milling machine.
- Machine - flowing with the use of mechanisms, machine tools or machines and requiring little human involvement.
- Automated - processes, the production of which is carried out automatically, the role of man is reduced to controlling the operation of mechanisms.
- Automatic lines, the production of which does not require human intervention.
4. Depending on the complexity of the products, types of production processes can be:
- Simple, including operations aimed at changing the properties of objects of the same type of labor. For example, the production of a batch of parts.
- Complex, consisting of simple operations, the implementation of which is aimed at the production of the final product or its intermediate unit. For example, the final assembly of the car.
5. Based on the scale of production of one type of product, production processes are divided into:
- Individual, designed for the production of non-repeating products. They are used in workshops producing products of frequently updated nomenclature. They require highly skilled workers and the use of complex multidisciplinary equipment. An example is experimental production.
- Serial, designed to produce products in small batches, repeating at regular intervals. In this case, the site is assigned specific operations that are performed in a given sequence.
- Mass are used in cases where production is aimed at producing homogeneous products in large quantities and for a long time.