Production classification system: concepts, models and strategies

Abstract

Production processes are most frequently classified in the literature into one of three categories: projects, intermittent processes (i.e., job or flow shops), or continuous processes (i.e., assembly lines or flow processes). A major shortcoming of this classification system is that it often fails to capture important aspects of real world production processes, thus providing manufacturing managers with little conceptual work to guide their decision-making. In this paper, a more comprehensive framework (which we denote as the production classification system, or PCS) is developed which defines and relates many types of production processes, In addition, a direct linkage between this framework and corporate competitive strategy is described.