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Production and Supply Chain Management Information Systems
specifications. Examples of make-to-order items are airplanes and large
industrial equipment.
• Assemble-to-order—Items are produced using a combination of make-to-
stock and make-to-order processes; the final product is assembled for a
specific order from a selection of make-to-stock components. Personal
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computers are a typical assemble-to-order product.

Fitter’s Manufacturing Process
Fitter uses make-to-stock production techniques to produce its snack bars. The
manufacturing process is illustrated in Figure 4-1.

Mixer
Snack bar production line
Mixer
Raw material Finished goods
warehouse Form Bake Pack warehouse
Mixer

Mixer

Source Line: Course Technology/Cengage Learning.

FIGURE 4-1 Fitter’s manufacturing process

The snack bar production line can produce 200 bars per minute—or 12,000 bars per
hour. Each bar weighs 4 ounces, which means the line produces 48,000 ounces (or 3,000
pounds) of bars per hour. The entire production line operates on one shift a day. The next
section describes Fitter’s production process in more detail.

Fitter’s Production Sequence
Raw materials are taken from the warehouse to one of four mixers. Each mixer mixes
dough in 500-pound batches. Mixing a batch of dough requires 15 minutes of mixing time,
plus another 15 minutes to unload, clean, and load the mixer for the next batch of dough;
therefore, each mixer can produce two 500-pound batches of dough per hour. That means
the four mixers can produce a total of 4,000 pounds of dough per hour—more than the
production line can process. Because only three mixers need to be operating at a time to
produce 3,000 pounds of snack bars per hour, a mixer breakdown will not shut down the
production line.
After mixing, the dough is dumped into a hopper (bin) at the beginning of the snack
bar production line. A forming mechanism molds the dough into bars, which will weigh
4 ounces each. Next, an automated process takes the formed bars on a conveyor belt
through an oven that bakes the bars for 30 minutes. When the bars emerge from the oven,
they are individually packaged in a foil wrapper, and each group of 24 bars is packaged
into a display box. At the end of the snack bar line, display boxes are stacked on pallets
(for larger orders the display boxes are first packed into shipping boxes, which are then
stacked on the pallets).

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