The Global Production Stage: How Manufacturing Drives Our Economy

All the world’s a stage of production, and all the parts and products merely players… or something like that.

William Shakespeare didn’t have modern manufacturing processes in mind when he penned that famous line in his play As You Like It, but his words still resonate in the manufacturing industry.

The world thrives on an endless production cycle. Companies constantly obtain and sell new products, customers consume those products and come back for more, and vendors keep retailers well-stocked.

On a smaller scale, production stages refer to the steps manufacturers use to create products. For example, Fishbowl Manufacturing separates production stages into multilevel work orders. A work order is a document that lists the steps it takes to produce a specific product or group of products.

Simple products can be constructed using just one work order. But if a product is a bit more complex, it may require several work orders, which must be completed in the correct order because each one that follows builds on what came before and cannot begin until the previous work order is completed.

Work orders can be used for numerous manufacturing jobs – not just putting products together, but also:

• Taking products apart
• Fixing malfunctioning products
• Taking parts from one product and using them in another
• Product upkeep
• Organizing employees’ schedules
• And more

As I said at the start, all the world’s a stage of production, and when you use Fishbowl Manufacturing’s work orders (and its other manufacturing tools) you can tell exactly what production stage all of your products are on.