341 ERP: Making it Happen

There are two basic ways for companies to organize their production
facilities: job shop and flow shop. Other terms you may have come
across, such as batch or intermittent, are essentially subsets of job or
flow. We don’t need to concern ourselves with them here.
JOB SHOP
First, let’s define job shop. Many people say a job shop is a place
where you make specials. Well, it’s true that specials can be made in
a job shop but so can standard products. The issue is not so much the
product but rather how the resources are organized. Let’s try this one
on for size:
Job shop: a form of manufacturing organization where the resources
are grouped by like type.
Other terms for job shop include functional form of organization or
single-function departments. The classic example of this approach is
a machine shop. Here all the lathes are in one area, the drills in an-