Understanding Repetitive Manufacturing Planning

Use repetitive manufacturing for highly repetitive production that relies on a production rate. Repetitive manufacturing enables you to specify a rate schedule by effective date in daily, weekly, or monthly quantities.

Repetitive manufacturing has these characteristics:

• Production volume is stable and predictable.

• Lead time is short.

• Factory layout is product-oriented and often characterized as cellular manufacturing in which dissimilar operations are physically grouped so that the product flows rapidly from one operation to the next.

• Setups are short so that switching between products does not significantly affect the time that is available for production.

• Group technology is often incorporated into the design engineering and manufacturing engineering to accommodate some variety with little effect on cost or production speed.

• Unit of measure is often each.

  However, it can also be volume- or weight-related when it is used in an environment that is similar to process manufacturing (as opposed to discrete).

Examples of repetitive products are:

• Electronic goods.

• Automobiles.

• Durable consumer goods (washing machines, refrigerators, and so on).