Question

Research a firm that uses a process-oriented layout. Describe your selected firm's layout and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the layout. Recommend changes that would improve your selected firm's layout.

Answer 1

I have selected Coca-Cola for this question.

Coca-Cola is considered to be the largest non-alcoholic beverage company and it is mainly involved in the production of soft drinks, fruit juices, bottled water, and related beverages. Coca-Cola is one of the most renowned organizations in the world.

Layout used:- As the company is mainly involved in the production of high quantity soft drink products thus it commonly uses the product layout in which the product moves from one workstation to other in the sequence which is followed for the production of the product from is raw material stage to the finished product stage.

The different work stations used in this layout are:-

The main advantages of this product layouts are as below:-

Lower per unit cost

Higher production quantity

Low skills of manpower

Easy tracking and control of operations

Easy to route and schedule

Greater efficiency and utilization

Efficient material management and handling

The main disadvantages of this product layouts are as below:-

Limited or almost no flexibility

If one workstation breaks down, the product standstills

Personalized incentives plans for the manpower is not possible

The possible improvements are as below:-

The company can try to use more workstation in order to make more products in a similar workstation

In order to motivate the manpower to produce high-quality products, the company can implement individualized incentive plans

In order to avoid any kind of breakdown of the workstation, the company can have a backup workstation