1. Cottage
- One person knows, organizes and does everything.
- Narrow product range.
- Low volume/small margin.
2. Craft-based
- Individuals or groups of specialists.
- Specific high skill level.
- Developed over many years – apprenticeship.
- Custom-made to order, hand-fitted.
- Simple & flexible.
- Pride & quality.
- Exclusive & expensive.
- No efficiency of scale.
3. Mass Production
- Narrowly skilled professionals design a product.
- Unskilled/semi-skilled workers make it using machines for specific purpose.
- High volume of a standard product.
- Don’t stop the production line.
- Use more space/workers/inventory to avoid disruption.
- A “push” system.
- Unchanging design, inflexible process – Difficult & costly to change.
- Acceptable Quality – fix it later.
- Low cost product, but low variety.
- Economy of scale, but work boring for most workers. Withhold knowledge & commitment.
4. Lean
- Combines low cost of mass production with the advantages of craft-based.
- Multi skilled workers – Motivated & in control.
- Flexible machinery.
- High volume and variety.
- Increasing quality and declining cost.
