Serial Production

Serial production has a number of advantages over other manufacturing processes. However, as already mentioned, it must fit the production goal. As you are not only producing individual items, serial production allows you to achieve significantly higher productivity at lower costs. And the cost aspect in particular has a positive effect on your production in many respects:

• You can manufacture similar products in series much more cost-efficiently.

• Larger production quantities per series reduce unit costs.

• More series means less retooling and this reduces your fixed costs in the long term.

Beyond this, serial production offers a good starting point for automating your production processes and opens up the possibility of just-in-time delivery. This in turn helps to optimize your stock levels and storage costs.

Of course, serial production can also have disadvantages. For example, not every series can be sensibly reproduced using serial production. Small series in particular can lead to disproportionate costs.

If you manufacture in series, you restrict your production facilities to certain products, variants or models. This limits your production flexibility.

If you are not working on a specific order but on forecast demand, serial production carries the risk of overproduction. If you misjudge demand or it changes unexpectedly, in the worst case scenario you will be left with too many products.

Let's leave aside the fact that your company offers serial production as a business model for other companies. When should you switch to serial production? It makes sense if

• Your customers demand small quantities of a product.

• there are many repeat orders for the same product, resulting in a high degree of repetition.

• you want to meet seasonal demand, produce larger quantities of a product in certain periods and then switch back to other products.

One-off production is always one-off production. But the case is different for serial production. Here there are subtypes with different characteristics.

In variety production, the products differ only slightly and by individual characteristics - for example, shape, size or color. The basic principle here is that the manufacturing process remains largely identical and is only adapted to the slight product variance.

You can find an example of variety production in your trusted fashion store. The garments are basically the same, but are offered in different sizes.

In batch production, differences arise due to the manufacturing process and from batch to batch. Within a batch, the products should be identical, but involuntary deviations can still occur - for example in color, fragrance intensity, consistency or strength.

Anyone who has ever bought tiles in a DIY store knows how important it is to buy packages from the same batch. This is the only way to rule out color variations. Another example is soap production. Here, one batch with consistent properties is produced per mixing container.

In batch production, differences in the result are not caused by the process, but by the raw material used. No matter how much attention you pay to absolutely uniform production and processing methods, the final product will still vary - for example in terms of aroma or acidity.

You can find an example in your coffee cup. Even if the beans are always processed in the same way, the taste can vary because they come from different growing regions or vintages.