All businesses produce a product. Whether this product is a service, a consumer good or a capital good, the way it is produced is determined by factors such as cost, quantity demanded, complexity, customisation and many more. Most business use a variety of production methods due to the range of products they produce. Furthermore, a business may utilise a range of production methods for a single product.

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These production methods fall into 3 main categories. Job production focuses on customisation, batch production focuses on mostly identical products with some customisation, and flow productions focuses on completely identical products. An extension of flow production is cell manufacturing, whereby the flow is broken into smaller sections. Each will be investigated in this unit.