What’s the difference between Machine Shops and Job Shops
Only a few years ago it would not have been a consideration for a Job Shop, or a Project Shop to consider robotics and automation. The very nature of the smaller production runs and changing schedules don’t seem conducive to these large investments. Let’s review the differences in operations first before we look at the feasibility of automation in production shops and job shops.
What Type of Shop Do I Have?
Job shops, production machine shops, and other types of shops are all in the business of part manufacturing. These different descriptions detail the path products to take through the manufacturing processes, the pulse of the business, or the character of the operation.
If your products move through a consistent path on the same machine on a regular schedule you most likely operate a production machine shop. If your products move from machine to machine in a manner as needed you might have a job shop. But you may have a hybrid or another type of shop entirely. Before we discuss automation, let’s look at some key identifiers of each.
Production Machine Shops
A machine dedicated to one operation in high-volume runs qualifies as a production machine shop. These are advantageous for automotive, electronics, and fastener manufacturing. They require process controls to deliver consistent appearance and tolerances.
Each operation will be run on a different machine, for example, an added slot or threaded hole, as opposed to multiple processes on one machine.
The key advantages of speed and accuracy make the addition of robotics simple and effective. Each stage of production is easy to assess and optimize. Production is a big investment, but once set up processes can run autonomously.
Disadvantages of this type of production include inflexibility. One machine failure can stall a complete production line. Idle machines are costly to a manufacturer, and this is multiplied in a production machine shop. Following this same theme, a part made incorrectly on one machine through design or operator error can run through a full process with subsequent operations adding more errors. This can lead to a large amount of scrap. Production machine shops are difficult to change over and expand without large capital investment.
Robotics and intelligent IoT software add to speed and accuracy in production machine shops. This was the first introduction to robotics with simple, stationary, repetitive processes.
