This article aims to introduce you to the knowledge of Production Management. We hope that the concepts presented here are useful to complement your business training and to improve the production model of your company.
The Management Production not only refers to the production of goods, but also applies in the services sector, such as hotels, educational institutions etc. It is also known as Operations Management.
Basically, Production Management deals with the continuous and dynamic process of making decisions regarding the operations that must be carried out in the company to satisfy some needs, (The same that are changing over time and that may come from a group specific consumers) through the manufacture of a product or the provision of a service.
To start, companies must be classified according to size in order to better understand and apply the concepts. We then have Large Companies with more than 200 employees such as the automotive industry, Medium Companies with more than 50 and up to 200 employees such as footwear companies, finally the Small Company with less than 50 employees, for example a clothing company. Then there are minor classifications such as Microenterprise with less than 10 employees, such as a joinery workshop and Famiempresa where labor is provided by family members from a neighborhood store.
The examples above do not imply that we should box those industries in the sizes for which they were exemplary. Not all garment companies are small companies.
Another classification:
Other factors to classify the size of companies are:
-
Capital.
The size of the facilities
Investment in equipment.
Type of technology.
But well, beyond the size of the organizations, they always represent the areas of the company:
- Personnel management area Accounting area Marketing area Administration area Production area
Let's dedicate ourselves to the Production Area. Production is the creation of a good or service by combining the necessary factors to satisfy the created need.
Let's identify which elements are fundamental in the Production Area. There are three:
- Man machine machine material
This means that by means of the three elements coordinated efficiently through good administration we can obtain the products that generate profit for us and therefore bring prosperity to a company. In a nutshell Production is the soul of the company.
Now, let's define what the production process is: It is the production of goods and services that basically consists of a transformation process that follows organized action plans and according to which the inputs of production factors, such as materials, knowledge and skills, They become the desired products through the application of labor, a certain technology and the necessary capital contribution.
At this point it is vital that we understand that the production area is not only made up of the production process itself, but that it contains other elements that share its same importance, since a failure in any of them can be catastrophic for the business.
The production area is made up of:
-
Product Design.
Quality Control.
The organization of production.
The distribution of the work area.
Industrial Security.
General Maintenance
As you will notice, production is a long chain that needs a lot of order and awareness of what is done. Sometimes the entrepreneurs neglect one or more of these sub areas and the only thing they achieve is internal and external problems.
For example. Can you imagine a company with a dangerously messy workplace, where the employer does not control the quality of the raw material and does not respect the demands of his clients in this regard, which is committed to delivering jobs without counting the ones he already has, which It does not manage well the advances in money that its clients make, it sacrifices quality of finished due to being on time or because the operators are not trained, with a deposit of raw material where things are not found and that is why you have to buy more and that in the end they always look bad with the delivery. To make matters worse, imagine that the facilities do not meet safety standards, such as having outlets, or that operators are trained in the use of dangerous tools.In this type of space there is not even a first-aid kit, and it goes without saying that the equipment is almost always damaged because it has never been properly maintained.
Unfortunately, the case we imagined above is not entirely fictional. It is more common than we would expect. We find these industrial workspaces everywhere. How about we correct those flaws. Surely that company would be highly competitive and would be in a position of strength before the others.
In short, the most common conflicts in production are usually:
- Bad design of the product or service. Disorder on the job site. Not knowing how to schedule production. Not controlling the quality throughout the process. Lack of industrial safety. Lack of equipment maintenance.
For all of the above, the production area is of high value to the company and must be taken very seriously.
Be organized in your company and increase your profits. Be competitive and reach your goals. Remember that the only option for a family-owned company is to be a micro-company and for a micro-company to be a small company, and so on.
