Reading

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 415.

1. Skim through text 10 and think of the suitable title. TEXT 10

When job production is used to make a complex technical product tailored to the needs of customers the sales force will be relatively large and a high degree of technical expertise will be required. Smaller firms may overcome this problem by using the services of an agent. The cost of selling will then be spread over all the firms employing the agent as a principal. Effectively the agent is selling knowledge of the market and technical skills. The business employing the agent is reducing the overheads of maintaining a sales force.

The business is likely to need to own or lease a wider range of machinery. Machine A may be required to produce parts for jobs X, Y and Z. Depending on the importance of the time factor and the cost of re-setting Machine A, the business may need the use of more than one machine to meet the delivery dates for its orders. Delivery dates are set by the market. A firm is less competitive if it offers a delivery date six months after a firm order is placed than one who can offer a delivery date two months after the order is placed. The truth of that statement will, of course, depend upon the uniqueness of the product concerned. A business with a virtual monopoly in a market is in a far stronger position than one competing with a number of firms offering close substitutes for its product. Job production requires a flexible workforce. The technically simple product presents few problems. A more sophisticated product demands a highly skilled workforce able to do a wide range of specialized tasks. This can be expensive in labour costs. Add to this the need for highly competent supervisors and a flexible management team able to undertake technical supervision, costing and labour management and it becomes clear why more economic methods of production have been developed.

Job production is different from plant layout using the job shop approach. In the latter the workspace is organized in terms of functions. Machines to perform a given operation will be grouped in work centres and different products will take a different route through each work centre. A furniture business could have work centres for cutting, turning, staining, assembling and polishing, among others.

2. Read text 10 more carefully. Try to guess the words underlined from the context.

Then use your dictionary to check the words.