During the production there are many machines used, these machines are hand tools and cutting devices. They obviously use different machines compared to a car factory, because each van is made individually. They types of equipment that they use are hand tools, industrial saws, normal carpentry tools, and spraying equipment. All of the work is labour intensive, this means that most of the work is done by the employees. Without the workers nothing can be made, resulting in no money coming into the company. As you can see the type of production that Whitby Morrison use is job production. This type of production produces vans depending on the customer’s specification and normally takes a week to produce 3 vans.
Other production techniques include benchmarking. This enables them to copy over companies that produce vans and make their vans better than their rivals.
The type of stock system that they employ is JIT. This is suitable for this company because they only need to produce what the customer wants. By using JIT they can order parts of the van instead of keeping lots of parts in the warehouse, which will limit the amount of space that they have to produce each product. There isn’t much capacity in both warehouses to stock parts. The way that they use JIT is by processing the order, and then ordering the required parts, this will normally take up to a few weeks depending on the part. Customer’s normally start ordering their vans around January and expect it to be ready for May. This can be a difficult job, as they need time for the parts to be delivered.
Whitby Morrison use ICT to help them with their business. It is mainly used to purchase parts, administration, stock check, mostly the financial side to keep everything on computer rather than files in cabinets. This increases office space. They also use ICT for designing logos, signs, and decorations to go onto the van. They don’t use CAM (computer aided manufacture) as most of the work is done by hand.
The stages of the process are as follows:
. First they take the orders from the customer. Each order will have many factors. The delivery time of each part is taken into consideration. For example the windows need 5 weeks for it to be in stock.
. Once all of the details are processed, and the parts have arrived, they begin to put the product together. Each van is split up into different parts of the department where each is individually made and customised. One department will be dealing with the fridges, ice cream machines, another will be dealing with the shape of the van, moulding and cutting it into shape. Each part is done simultaneously.
. Once all of the parts of the van are created and modified, they will install each part into the van, connected each bit in order for everything to work.
. After the installation stage, they will clean up then begin painting the van and doing any artwork and sign writing.
. The last stage will be to check if there are any errors with the van and if there are then it is their responsibility to correct them. Then clean the machine and hand the keys to the customer.
At the end of the visit I realised that making an ice cream van is a very long and expensive process. Whitby Morrison is close working community, if there were to be any quarrels between the workers, the business will suffer greatly as the firm depends on its workers to produce ice cream vans. I think overall that this business is very good, because by creating each part simultaneously it will reduce waiting times, therefore time won’t be wasted, and the extra time will be used to create other parts for other customers. If you to visit the factory, you wouldn’t think that it was organised, as there are random parts everywhere, but if you were working there, you would have a different opinion because the parts that are lying around could be lying around for a reason. The reason could be that those parts are to be fixed in a certain order. There isn’t much to say about job production. It is relatively slow because you are adjusting you skills to the required specifications. Every project is different unlike a production line, where it never changes. You do one job. But with job production you are using every skill to produce one part, but each time that one part is different. In the end I think their production process is still very successful, time is the only disadvantage, but at the finish the customer will receive an ice cream van that fits to their needs.
