Manufacturing is the process of converting raw materials, components, or parts into finished goods that meet a customer’s expectations or specifications. Manufacturing commonly employs a man-machine setup with a division of labor in large-scale production.
Shortly we can say that the manufacturing process itself involves changing the form of goods.
According to the definition, it has the following features-
- Changing the form of goods
- The operation conducted in factories
- It involves the division of labor
- Power-driven machinery used
The Manufacturing Process and Location
Manufacturing Process
Manufacturing processes are the steps through which raw materials are transformed into a final product. At the time of establishing a factory, a manufacturer makes several separate or interrelated decisions about the nature of business, including the following:
- The scale of operation, including how much is to be produced and at what price it is to be offered to the customer?
- The technique to be adopted involves an appropriate combination of inputs.
- The location of the factory.
Steps in manufacturing processes
There are five basic steps in manufacturing processes, these include the following
- Creating the design for the products
- Sourcing raw materials
- Processing the raw materials
- Production and quality control
- Marketing
1. Creating the design of the products
- It is one of the first things to be considered in manufacturing.
- Designs should dictate the utility of the product to the end customer and it should not only be inherent to the product itself but as well as to the packaging.
- In designing the product and its packaging, it must be considered that it should be innovative, creative, and contemporary.
2. Sourcing the raw materials
- It depends upon the kind of product that is being manufactured. Raw materials in manufacturing can be acquired from local sources or they might be imported from other countries.
- Local raw materials mostly come from nature such as from the mines, plantations, farms, fisheries, and more.
- Imported raw materials can be acquired mostly from other business firms such as crude oil, flour, chemicals, machinery and parts, electronic parts, and several others.
3. Processing the raw materials
It also depends on the kind of products that are manufactured. Three manufacturing processes can be used depending upon the nature of the product to be produced.
- Analytical process: This process involves the breaking down of the raw materials into smaller parts. Examples of analytical process is the processing of different preserved foods such as corned beef, hot dogs, sausages, and several others.
- Synthetic process: This process involves the assembling of readymade parts or using mixed ingredients. An example is the manufacturing of automobiles where in most of the parts are assembled.
- Conditioning process: In this process, the raw materials may be changed in its form for it to be used for another purpose. An example of this is the processing of marble which is reshaped and smoothened and changed from its original appearance to be used as tiles.
4. Production and quality control
- It assures that a single product has the same quality of the rest that are being manufactured.
- The use of workers who are trained for checking in every stage of manufacturing processes will ensure that the products undergoes quality control and meet the company’s standard.
5. Marketing
- It involves the distribution of the finish products to the consumers.
- Success in marketing depends upon the products quality, demand price, advertisements and several other factors.
Manufacturing Location
- The choice of location cannot be considered in isolation from scale and technique.
- Different scales of operation may require different locations to give access to markets of different sizes, and if the location decision is made first, this may have an important bearing on the output that the firm can expect to sell.
- Different techniques will favor different locations as firms tend to gravitate toward cheap sources of the inputs required in the largest quantities, and location itself can influence the combination of inputs and hence the technique adopted.
- The two major sets of economic variables influencing industrial location are thus those relating to technique and those relating to scale.
- The way these variables affect and affected by location is very important, and its introduction here helps to emphasize at the outset the interdependence of the three decisions.
- Business success may not be determined by choice of location alone, but technique and scale as they influence profits and cannot be divorced from location
Classical Location Principles
For the greater part of the 20th century geographers depend on theory to explain manufacturing patterns developed at a time. The location of traditional manufacturing process involved with the refining of mineral resources such as those can still best accounted for using classical approach.
Classical industrial location theory assumes perfect competition among firms where no firms experience monopoly advantages arising from a particular location. Some classical theories are discussed below.
1. Least cost
Producers try to produce his product with minimum or least cost. It has three assumptions
- Raw material occur at only a few locations
- Market existed only at specific places
- Labor supply was immobile and available only at several specific locations.
2. Substitution
Substitution approach allows for substituting any of the factors in the production process such as cheap coal might be exchanged for higher cost natural gas in determining an optimum location for one firm.
3. Profit maximization
It indicates that firms locate so as maximize revenues.
- Spatial margins: The spatial margins perspective combines features from both the production and revenue sides.
- It allows for location flexibility within a range defined by the intersection of space cost curves (SCC) and space revenue curves (SRC).
4. Interdependence
The interdependence of firms can be best accounted for in a systems framework because it includes the operating units and their relationship with one another and external environment.
5. Central place theory
Firms with widely dispersed branch plant locations in various sizes of cities can be best accounted for with central place theory.
Critique of classical theory
These approaches allow for many goals other than minimizing costs or maximizing profits.
Contemporary of Behavioral and Structural Approach:
- This behavioral approach emphasizes the dynamic and uncertain environment.
- It has grown out the awareness that today’s larger and more diversified multinational firm exerts greater control over its business environment.
- The structural approach overcomes this weakness by attempting to explain behavior using a historical-political perspective.
Behavioral location theory
- The behavioral approach provides an alternative participate on the role of industrial location to the firm.
- Many firms are uncertain and defensive in their behavior, which leads them to be very conservative and consider a shift in the location only as a last resort.
- This process simply involves on-site expansion. In other cases indirect location strategies involve closures or establishing branch locations.
Structural approach
- The structural approach to industrial location focuses attention on the political economy of economic growth rate and its impact on industrial location.
- From a Marxist perspective, the structuralize argument suggests that competitive processes lead “to a fall in the general rate of profit, forcing firms to find whatever means may be available to keep up profits and accumulate capital in the interest of survival”.
- This process is turn decreased skill level requirements in the workplace and led to disenfranchisement of labor.
