What is a serial production line and the benefits of process standardization?

Mass production is a manufacturing strategy used in industry to produce large quantities of products. To implement this production model, it is necessary to standardize processes and create a family of products with common components.

The products of a family are designed to be different and the same at the same time. They are manufactured to meet different applications, but they go through the same production processes until they reach their final format. This ensures that the company can buy as many equal raw materials as possible and thus reduce production costs.

Parts Family in the Production of Items in Practice

For example, a company that manufactures soft drinks with different flavors and sizes of bottles, producing each flavor and bottle size separately, will have a very high production cost. But by standardizing production processes and creating a family of products, which share the same components and machines to produce multiple variations of its products, the company will reduce costs and increase production efficiency. So, by creating a product family, you can make the most of resources, and standardizing manufacturing processes will allow workers to become more efficient in their role, reducing the time needed to produce each item.

In the automotive industry, it is common to see different models of the same car, such as the Hatch, Sedan, and SW. A car's platform can be shared across multiple models, and creating a product family allows a company to produce several models with a wide variety of options, such as different engines, sound systems, and interior trim.

Parts Family in the Production of Items at FanTR

At FanTR, we have already adopted this idea since 2016 and we have a wide variety of products that follow this logic. Starting in 2021, we started an inventory program to serve customers faster. By 2024, we want to use this same idea for our new "M-Flow" family of fans to more efficiently service the largest projects.