Ever consider the journey undergone by your favorite products? From raw materials to finished product, most everyday items go through some form of process manufacturing.
The process model is a foundational product development approach especially useful among those creating consumables like processed foods and beverages. But if your team deals with any formula-based development, it’s worth thoroughly understanding the basics of every process manufacturing system.
What’s process manufacturing?
Process manufacturing involves transforming raw materials into finished products through chemical, biological, or physical means. The transformation is irreversible, meaning you can’t retrieve the original materials upon completion. And this manufacturing type often relies on proprietary or patented formulas — think the secret recipe to Coca-Cola.
Typical industries using this manufacturing framework are food and beverage, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology. In these industries, ingredients are combined, bonded, heated, pressurized, or cooked (or some combination of these) to create a final product distinct from its initial components.
Common process manufacturing types
The manufacturing process you choose depends on your industry, the raw materials you’re working with, and your operational scope. Here are a few common strategies teams can tweak to meet their unique needs.
Job shop manufacturing
Job shop manufacturing is all about customization and flexibility. Teams make products in small batches, often tailoring them to customer requirements. And each workstation might focus on a specific product set. For instance, a commercial printer might work on multiple orders simultaneously, each customized to align with a different customer’s needs.
Repetitive manufacturing
Assembly lines are the best example of repetitive manufacturing. Here, products are created in a continuous, repetitive manner, and often at a large scale. It’s the hallmark of mass production strategies for making popular consumables like dish soap or over-the-counter medications.
Batch process manufacturing
Batch process manufacturing yields products in large groups (or batches). This method resembles following a cooking recipe — each batch goes through one process stage before moving on to the next. Unsurprisingly, this method is most common in food production.
Continuous process manufacturing
The continuous method is like a 24/7 kitchen, with the facility running around the clock and constantly converting raw materials into finished products. It’s an approach common in industries like oil refining and energy production.
Discrete versus process manufacturing
Unlike the process approach, discrete manufacturing involves assembling distinct items (like cars or furniture) as opposed to consumables. And the latter strategy provides a final product where its parts can be disassembled. If you create a vehicle (discrete manufacturing), you can take it apart and put it back together.
Discrete manufacturing often relies on a decentralized approach. For instance, automakers rarely produce all vehicle components at one location. Instead, they rely on a network of third-party entities to produce various components like microchips, LED lights, and bolts.
7 key process manufacturing steps
While you might tweak your process depending on your industry and the final product, most manufacturers working with raw materials follow some version of the following seven-step guide.
1. Develop your vision
Gather your core product development team and craft a raw idea you can build on through further brainstorming sessions with other relevant stakeholders, like suppliers and the client.
When developing this vision, consider the following:
- Who’s our target audience?
- How big is this market sector?
- Who’s our competition?
- Is there a clear need for this product?
- Does this item fill a void or solve a problem?
- Are similar products trending, or must we build interest from scratch?
- Can our team feasibly create this item?
2. Conduct research
Now that you’ve chosen a feasible item that solves a problem for your target audience, undergo thorough research to better understand how you ought to produce this item. Consider things like:
- High-quality yet cost-effective materials
- Functionality
- User-friendliness
- Production and marketing budget
- Resource requirements (people, money, technology)
During this phase, choose the costing method you’ll use to determine production expenses. Effectively tracking costs helps your team avoid crafting a product that’s impossible to manufacture at a larger scale.
With all this information in hand, create a roadmap that outlines this item’s manufacturing process before diving in.
3. Start designing
Begin product creation while always staying focused on your end user’s needs. Stop often, checking in with other relevant departments and clients (if applicable) to ensure you hit every marker, like resource constraints and target audience expectations.
Throughout this design phase, test your manufacturing process — for the current design team as well as anyone involved in future production. Take this opportunity to remove inefficiencies and ensure every step is necessary and valuable — and that you’re not missing any.
4. Try out your prototype
Post-design, you’ve officially got a prototype. Test this item on target audience volunteers and teammates, gathering feedback and refining your design before proper production.
You’ll often need to complete several rounds of prototyping, testing, and refinement before your product is ready for large-scale production. While returning to the drawing board multiple times is frustrating, have patience and resist the urge to cut corners.
5. Begin product manufacturing
Here’s where the rubber meets the road. Carefully forecast demand to decide how many units to produce, then put your prototype into production.
Even if you’re extremely confident in your idea, don’t overproduce the item until you have real-world sales data. Forecasting models can be inaccurate, especially when dealing with entirely new products. That said, you also don’t want to underproduce, as doing so can lead to shortages and consumer frustration. Be slightly optimistic to avoid both revenue-shattering over-production and stock outs.
6. Test again
Soft-launch your product by offering it to a select few customers and asking for feedback. You might also test marketing campaigns on a smaller audience first before using them during a full-scale launch. A/B test various versions of different promotional materials to better understand what “hits” with your audience. Once you’ve found the right approach, kick off marketing a couple weeks before product launch.
7. Release the product and manage operations
It’s full-on launch time, and process manufacturing is underway. Set markers — like every month — to check in on product development and consumer feedback, tweaking your process and the final product as necessary.
Why use process manufacturing?
If you’re crafting consumables — or really anything that involves transforming raw materials into a final, unalterable item — the process model is an excellent manufacturing tactic to streamline product production. Here are a few more pointed benefits:
- Cost savings: This is a savvy cost-saving approach, as you can buy raw materials in bulk and combine them on-site to yield finished products. It also keeps carrying costs low by efficiently transforming raw materials into final products in large quantities. Bulk production reduces the need for extensive inventory storage, minimizes waste, and streamlines the supply chain, leading to big savings in storage and handling.
- Enhanced communication and employee morale: Process manufacturing requires defining a clear recipe (or order of operations). This clarity reduces frustrating misunderstandings and increases team efficiency, in turn improving employee morale.
- A simplified product base: This manufacturing approach simplifies production while ensuring optimal product quality. You convert every step into a standardized formula to take the guesswork out of workflows and facilitate systemization.
How manufacturing software assists the process
To ensure you gain the benefits listed above, you can use manufacturing software that manages every step in the production process. Leading tools like Fishbowl provide transparency into key functions and processes, including material supply and inventory, equipment costs, and overall process performance.
Manufacturing software also features advanced analytics and reporting capabilities. You can use these features to track performance over time, monitor trends, and identify potential workflow bottlenecks.
Bringing it all together with Fishbowl
Process manufacturing is an excellent strategy for creating consumables at scale. However, you must optimize your material-handling and production-tracking capabilities if you want to maximize output. To do that, you need an all-in-one manufacturing management solution like Fishbowl.
Fishbowl manages all your manufacturing workflows in real time, providing a single source of truth to inform decision-making and streamline your operations. Book a demo today to learn more.