Average Production Time

What is average production time?

Every product takes a specific number of hours to be produced in a manufacturing facility. Production time in manufacturing refers to the number of goods that can be produced in a given period of time. Another definition could be the amount of time it takes to manufacture one unit of a product. The production time depends on the speed at which labor is expected to operate, which could be fast, slow, or average.

Companies should also keep track of production rates. This metric helps identify bottlenecks so the manufacturing can be done as efficiently as possible. Below is a detailed overview. 

Production rate

In an ideal world, every manufacturing company will run all the time perfectly. Sadly, this is not an ideal world. Rushing orders or using inferior resources often leads to worse products. Putting more time and money into a product may mean higher quality but a slower production rate. A balance must be struck between the demand for output and the expectations for it.    

Many factors can affect a company’s production rate throughout the manufacturing process. Using cheaper resources or under trained staff will cost more in the long run. No one wants to buy an inferior product, even if it is cheaper to cut corners to make it. 

Alternatively, products sourced from unpredictable or untrustworthy companies can lead to a stall in production. What happens to the resources will affect the manufacturer if anything goes wrong on their end. Cheaper resources can lead to wastage or unusable offcuts, which will drastically affect the batch size.

Regardless of the cause, every company should keep the production rate under consideration. Flaws and errors will always occur, regardless of the quality of staff. How often and how bad errors may occur is unpredictable, but they should always be expected.

Calculating production rate

Production rate is calculated simply by dividing your weekly output by the number of hours used to produce them. If a standard 50-hour week produces 10,000 units, then this would mean your production rate is 200 units per hour (10,000 / 50), including a few faulty units. You can use this figure of 200 per hour to gauge your production rate in the long term and see where you can improve your QA along the way. 

An ideal or maximum production rate is when product units can be manufactured without breaks, upset, or downtimes. This rate is often used as a target to judge real rates depending on how near they are to this number.

Quality control

Quality Control involves testing an item’s quality to determine whether it meets the predefined standards. This also helps improve the production process and establish controls as to how manufacturing should be carried out. For instance, the QC team might decide that a certain area of manufacturing should be handled by those who have specialized training to minimize the chances of faults and errors. 

With less downtime in the process to address faults, the manufacturing will flow smoothly, improving the overall production rate.