What is involved in the Production Process?
Businesses sell things, and the things they sell are either things which they produce; or services they produce.
Producing a product (or service) can involve the business operator in the following ways:
- Purchasing (e.g. buying the raw materials needed).
- Production (e.g. growing produce, mining, manufacturing, creating something).
- Managing the finished product – marketing, sales, product reviews.
- Controlling credit.
Businesses often fail when they do not balance these four components of production.
Consider:
- A business with excessive raw material, waiting to be used, but an inability to process the material into something that is saleable.
- Having a farm with heaps of produce, but nowhere to store it, let alone sell it.
- Having a team of consultants, all ready to provide a great service, but no clients to work for or sell to.
- Producing a product that is no longer wanted – all good businesses must review clients, needs and forecast new directions and requirements.
- Having produced and supplied products and services to lots of customers, but piles of unpaid customer accounts on your desk.
Think of this as a 3 part closed system:
1. Inputs
2. Operations
3. Outputs
- Inputs may be things such as raw materials, component parts of goods being created, energy and manpower used.
- Operations refer to the processing or converting of inputs.
- Outputs refer to the goods that are produced, as well as any waste (e.g. pollution, energy losses, etc.).
Production Activities
A typical manufacturing plant might involve the following production operations:
- Purchasing
- Receiving
- Shipping (dispatch)
- Quality Control
- Research and Development
- Maintenance
- Stock-keeping
Forecasting
When a business does forecasts, they are establishing what the expectations of customers, or customer opinions or trends will be at a later date. And they do this by using data collected in the past (such as past sales, marketing data etc.). This is an important process for any business, because forecasting will also tell them how much money the business will need today, in order to capitalize on future. And forecasting establishes the benefits of such long term investments. It allows you to decide whether such long-term investments are worthwhile or not.
The market can change due to:
- Changes in consumer tastes.
- New products becoming available.
- New legislation and regulations changing how products must be made.
- An increase in visibility of the product.
Changing Tastes are Unavoidable
People are becoming more and more sophisticated. They want more choice. A particular product may be very popular for a time, but products can go out of fashion (the same as anything else). A product might be the “thing you must have” in December, but by April, no one is really interested in them. This is particularly the case when dealing with items such as children’s toys. The toy everyone wants for Christmas can be discarded and out of fashion before the end of January. So try to be aware that a product is becoming less popular – slowing of sales in January for example can be attributed to an after Christmas lull. However if sales have not bounced back by February then you will need to consider what you will do:
- Just keep the stock until it might become popular again? This is a courageous decision to make as the product may never be popular again.
- Sell it off at a discount to get rid of the stock? At least this way you continue to have cash flow.
These actions hold a risk:
With the first approach– you may be left with a lot of unwanted stock and therefore loss of turnover but also a loss of your original investment.
With the second course of action you may sell off at a loss so you also crystallize your losses with no hope of recouping this loss once the goods are sold.
Sell just above cost to cover your initial outlay for the goods and your administration and selling costs – you cover losses and get your money back – however the goods may not be cheap enough to attract customer’s attention.
Although all these actions hold a risk – the first one (no action) is the riskiest. The others have less risk. However you must be in the best position to decide which action you take and how much risk you are willing to take. Experience, understanding your market and analyzing your sales, will all help in minimizing your exposure to risk. This will also help you to make better decisions when faced with these types of situations.
Lesson Structure
- Introduction
- Business law
- types of businesses
- starting a business
- Finance
- Liquidity
- The money market
- terminology
- insurance
- Financial Records
- Simple Bookkeeping procedures
- cash flow
- Financial Management
- Taxation
- costing
- budgeting
- investing
- Business Planning
- Overview
- Improving results in business
- Developing a 12 month business plan.
- Mistakes to avoid
- Pitfalls: lack of market research, problems with marketing, cash flow, attitude, etc
- Profitability
- Profitability ratios
- Reasons why businesses fail
7. Vertical farm Maintenance
Learn to maintain properties -both inside and out.
Property maintenance can involve a very wide variety of work tasks. No one person can be an expert at everything; but a good property manager needs to understand the scope and nature of work to a point where they can make good decisions and take action where appropriate, either doing the work themselves, or where it is beyond them, finding and engaging an appropriate expert to do the job.
What Can Property Maintenance Involve?
Nothing ever stays the same on a property. Soil erodes, plants grow, surfaces discolour, timber and metal will often deteriorate. Stone and brick deteriorate too, but most often just more slowly than timber and metal.
Things get damaged on properties, both interiors and exteriors of buildings as well as surfaces in a garden, walls, fences and other things.
Property maintenance can reduce the quantity and rate of deterioration; or identify, repair or replace things when needed.
Routine maintenance will often stop the escalation of damage that can occur as a result of neglect. Consider stains for instance. If a surface stain is removed when it is minor, it is easy to remove; but when ignored, it can become worse and eventually so embedded onto a surface that it is costly or even impossible to remove.
- Fumes – surfaces may be tarnished by petrol and oil, particularly if adjacent to roads or driveways.
- Paint – paint may be spilled onto surfaces or may have been applied and is no longer wanted.
- Chemical residues – sometimes stains emerge from oxidation or rust from metal reinforcement or service pipes. Rust can sometimes appear on a wall from any metal above or near to the wall (e.g. roof spouting, downpipes, or balustrades).
Salt damage (efflorescence) – salt damage is common in brickwork. White powder or crystals can form on masonry when moisture soaks through the masonry then dries on the surface. This is prevalent when dampness comes through a retaining wall or rises from the soil below a wall made from a porous material such as concrete blocks or clay bricks. This process is called ‘efflorescence’. The process begins with salts dissolving in water and finishes with that water evaporating from the surface of the masonry, leaving the residue of salts behind.
Features
- VERTICAL FARM
- ONHAND BRACTICE
- MANAGING VERTICAL FARM
- SET UP A VERTICAL FARM
- LEAD A TEAM IN VERTICAL FARM
Target audiences
- FARMERS, GROWERS
- INVESTORS
- PRODUCERS
- HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS