Definition: Job order production is the process of manufacturing custom or unique products for specific customers. Sometimes job order production is also called job order manufacturing or custom production because each order or job is a customize order placed by the customer. Most of the time custom jobs are only produced once.
What Does Job Order Production Mean?
Many manufacturers specialize in mass-producing custom products. Customers come to the manufacturer with a specific design or product in mind and the manufacturer develops and creates the custom product. A good example of a custom manufacturer is a print shop or studio. A customer might visit his local print shop with a design for 100 graduation invitations.
This design has a custom logo, font, and picture of the graduate. Printing these invitations would be considered one job because the print shop would have to setup its presses one time in order to print all 100 invitations. The process of designing and printing custom invitations is considered job order production.
Example
Take our graduation invitation example for instance. The print shop will most likely only produce this job once. It’s unlikely that the customer will come back in the future and want more of the same invitations printed. Some custom jobs are produced more regularly however. A good example of this is event fliers. The local coffee shop might have weekly events that it needs fliers for. The print shop can simply change a template from the last job and create a new custom order.
