How to Identify Discrete Manufacturing Processes: A Guide

The Discrete Manufacturing Process has several characteristics that can be easily identified in the production of distinct products and components. These include (but not limited to):

• The use of production lines to manufacture products or components, similar to the Repetitive Manufacturing Process
• The heavy influence on the design of the product or component which can be highly disparate
• The setup and tear-down frequencies altering the time of the production process (This is once again influenced by how different the products or components being manufactured are)
• The production of units can be low in volume with high complexity, or High in volume with low complexity. This can alter the needs of the company and its customers regarding quality, time-to-market speed and costs
• The production capacity is difficult, if not impossible, to calculate in discrete manufacturing due to the variation in production time and machine setups

As you begin homing in on your manufacturing process knowledge, you will eventually come across various terms such as process manufacturing. The easiest way to differentiate processes like Repetitive and Discrete from process manufacturing is that the latter use gases, liquids, powders and slurries in production.

Read about The five / six types of manufacturing process to see how they compare with one another. In case you come across a manufacturer who wants to compare discrete manufacturing against Process manufacturing – or you’re searching the answer for yourself – let’s explore the differences. Then we’ll take a look at some examples.