In this guide 6 sections
Match the product to your floor. A job shop needs routings and job cards for one-off orders, a batch plant needs recipes, lots and yields, and a repetitive plant needs line rates and schedules. Ignore the industry label. Pick the family by daily flow.
Start with how one order travels
Forget the industry name. Follow one order from the sales desk to the dispatch gate, and note what changes each time and what stays the same on every run.
If every order has its own drawing, quantity and due date, you run a job shop, and each job needs a routing of its own. If one formula is cooked in tanks of fixed size, you run batches, and if the same item rolls off a line all week, you run repeat production.
Many plants mix two modes. A box plant may run a standard carton on a standing schedule and a custom die-cut order on a one-off route, so decide which mode costs you most.
Job shop products centre on the routing
A CNC turning shop receives a drawing, a quantity and a delivery date, and the product builds a routing of facing, rough turn, finish turn, drilling and inspection. Each step books a lathe slot. Costing happens per job.
The software compares the quoted setup and run time with what the job card recorded, so rework and scrap land on that one job instead of an average. Ask about drawing revision control and insert tracking, because a shop that cannot find last year’s quote for the same part will quote blind again.
- Routings built per drawing and revision
- Job cards with setup time and run time
- Machine load across open jobs
- Quote history by part number
- Subcontract steps such as plating or heat treatment
Batch products centre on the recipe and the lot
A specialty chemical blender works from a formula, and the product scales the recipe to the tank, issues each raw material against it and records every lot number. Each finished lot gets a certificate.
Yield matters most here. Expected output against actual output shows whether a solvent evaporated, a transfer line held liquid or an operator overcharged a drum during the night shift.
Traceability runs both ways. A complaint on one finished drum should lead back to the raw material lots, and a bad raw material lot should lead forward to every customer who received it.
- Recipes scaled to tank size
- Raw material lot issue against each batch
- Yield and loss per batch
- Certificate of analysis per finished lot
- Expiry and retest dates on inputs
Repetitive products centre on rate and schedule
A corrugated box plant converts reels of paper into sheets and then boxes, and the question each morning is not what to make but what to run first. Line speed, changeover time and reel stock in hand drive the plan, and rated speed is the benchmark against which each shift’s output gets judged.
Downtime reasons come from a short list. A pattern such as repeated reel splices therefore shows up within a week, long before anyone would spot it in a monthly report.
Costing is per thousand pieces. Paper, ink, glue and power are spread across the run, so the standing schedule matters far more than any individual job card.
Choose by your costliest daily problem
List what went wrong this month. Late jobs and wrong quotes point to a job shop product, while failed lots and unexplained yield loss point to a batch product.
Idle lines point to repeat production. If you straddle two modes, start with the one that loses money, since a general production management product can cover both at a basic level.
Bring your own drawing. Demand a demo on your own part, formula or carton.
Production mode fit worksheet
Three columns for job shop, batch and repetitive work fit on one printed sheet, with rows for how orders arrive, the unit of work and how cost is booked. Rows also cover what you trace and what goes wrong most often, so the ticks reflect your real daily floor rather than your industry label. Tick the column that matches each row. Demo the tallest column first.
Open a blank worksheet to printQuestions owners ask
Can one product handle job shop and repeat work together?
Often yes, at a basic level. A general production management product can hold routings and standing schedules together, but you should test it with your trickiest real order before you commit.
Which mode is a machine shop with some standing orders?
Mostly job shop. Standing orders can sit as repeat jobs that copy an earlier routing, so you do not need a line scheduler for a few regular parts.
Do batch plants need lot tracking even if no law requires it?
Usually it is worth having. A customer complaint is far easier to settle when you can show exactly which raw material lots went into the drum that came back.
Should I choose by industry name or by production mode?
Production mode. Two plants in the same industry can run very differently, so the way an order moves through the floor should drive the choice, not the industry name.