Mass production techniques have the benefit to the company that they are cheap to run, quick, and produce consistently high quality products. They aren’t good at adapting to produce different products however. A firm changing to a more flexible production method such as cell production would be rewarded with benefits such as been able to produce a far wider range of products, meeting customer needs, and being able to produce in products in smaller quantities, reducing costs in times of lower sales. This is likely to make the firm more competitive and profitable. Flexible production is likely however, to prove more costly to the firm, with higher running costs. The staff benefits of flexible production techniques are likely to outweigh these. Working in a team, producing a product from start to finish is likely to be far more motivating than a repetitive, tedious job on a mass production line. Staff are likely to be needed to be more highly trained to perform the wider range of jobs flexible production requires. Although costly for the firm, staff are likely to be more motivated through their more enriched and more responsibility bearing jobs. This in turn could lead to higher levels of productivity and a less absenteeism and staff turn-over. In the long run, this is likely to save the firm money.
Employing a large number of staff to meet busy periods has the downside that in quieter periods many workers have very little to do. Other than the waste of funds that this is, bored, unproductive staff are likely to become de-motivated and feel un-needed which could cause higher levels of absenteeism in turn. Making staff redundant seasonally may solve this problem, but is likely to do little for employees job security. A firm trying to become more flexible and lean in its operations may employ the minimum number of its “core” employees full time and take on part time and contractual workers as and when it needs them. For the company this has clear benefits that staff aren’t required to be paid wages when they aren’t needed, they can simply be dismissed without any of the usual procedures required when dismissing a full time employee. Recruitment costs may also be lower, dealing through an agency for staff. For the staff the benefits are less great. There will be a huge amount of job insecurity associated with being a flexi-worker and this is likely to make you less motivated and therefore less productive. Having external employees who are frequently changing may also result in there being less of a “team feel” to the company which could weaken internal staff relations.
The benefits to a company trying to become more flexible are clearly very strong. Most of these benefits are however financial ones and in a company trying to keep all of its stakeholders happy, flexible production may not be the best answer. As far as staff are concerned, the wider range of tasks and responsibility involved in a flexible job may enrich their working life and make them feel more motivated, at the expense of job security however.
