Developed industry and a high level of the country's economy are key factors affecting the wealth and well-being of its population. Such a state has great economic opportunities and potential. A significant component of the economy of many countries is production.
What is modern production?
It is a type of production of tangible and intangible goods based on the application of the achievements of science and technology. Intensive changes in traditional production occurred in the mid-90s, when industry began to use technical innovations and developments of world scientists of the XX century. All areas of modern production depend on science and information.
The structure of modern production
Modern production is divided into two types of activity:
- Material production, which includes sectors of the economy that produce tangible goods: agriculture, industry, construction, etc.
- The service sector, which, in turn, is divided into two types:
- material services are aimed at satisfying the physical needs of the consumer, continuing the production process, providing the necessary conditions for entrepreneurial activity. These include food production, transportation, communications, trade, storage of goods, tourism, process maintenance in enterprises, housing services;
- intangible services - actions aimed directly at a person and his surrounding conditions. The result of such services does not take a substantive form. These include insurance, social services, healthcare, scientific activities, spiritual and intellectual services, receiving guests in food places and hotels, entertainment, education and counseling.
This structure of modern production is due to the rapid development in recent years of various kinds of services and information technologies.
Features of modern production
Modern production is characterized by such features:
- the increasing importance of services in production processes;
- the ability to satisfy not only the real needs of the consumer, but also his potential requirements;
- development of information technologies that underlie production processes;
- the economy of many countries is significantly dependent on intangible areas: culture and art.
Factors of modern production
- Personnel - an enterprise uses the labor of specially trained people to create goods or change objects of nature to meet the needs of society.
- Means of labor are all sorts of material things, with the help of which goods and services necessary for humanity are created. These include equipment (machines, tools, equipment, various apparatuses and tools), natural resources (for example, water at hydroelectric power stations). Thanks to the means of labor, natural wealth is transformed into useful objects and goods.
- Objects of labor are things or their combination that mankind uses to satisfy its needs. They are divided into natural substances that have not undergone change (coal seam), and raw materials that have undergone some processing (broken ore).
- Information - Recently, it has played a decisive role in production processes. Even if the company owns the first three factors, without information it is doomed to close.
Production technology
The production technology of the enterprise is a set of special techniques and knowledge that are used to produce goods of appropriate quality. The use of technology should be accompanied by documentation describing all the requirements, conditions and quality standards to which the company is oriented in the production process.
A manufacturing company uses a set of input factors that form the enterprise’s technology. For example, the owner of a confectionery workshop uses the labor of hired bakers, raw materials in the form of flour, sugar, various additives and capital - equipment, ovens, various equipment for the production of bread, pies and confectionery.
Modern technology is more advanced, and the company may make some adjustments to it to increase the volume of finished products with a set of standard factors of production. So, the owner calculates what is more profitable: a labor-intensive manual production process or the use of capital-intensive equipment.
Modern production technologies play a key role in operational efficiency. For this reason, the world is actively disseminating and sharing advanced know-how. Thus, economists have identified information as a new special factor in modern production.
Information is the key to success
Information is a set of specific knowledge and information. All areas of modern production are largely dependent on it. Information plays a crucial role, providing software control of technology, organization of the production process and its control, the ability to quickly make changes, instant distribution of progressive ideas and technologies, advanced training and knowledge level of employees.
The importance of knowledge in all areas is growing every day. Economists have identified this trend as a separate process, which they called the information revolution. It was she who served as the reason for the transition of developed countries from the industrial type of society to the information one.
Types of modern production
The 21st century is characterized by a wide variety of production activities. The largest enterprises compete for the development of new market niches, creating previously unknown goods and services.
It is very difficult to list all the types of production that exist today. But all of them, depending on the topic of activity, are united in such groups:
- Food production.
- Construction.
- Consumer goods manufacturing.
- Recycling.
- Production of building materials.
- Production of material resources for enterprises.
- Chemical production.
In each country, the development of these sectors of the economy may differ and depends mainly on the availability of the necessary raw materials and production capacities.
Organization of modern production
The organization of production processes is a combination of all processes and production elements, ensuring their interaction, creating conditions for the implementation of the economic goals of the enterprise and the social needs of workers.
Thanks to the rapid technological development and the development of new types of activities, the organization of production itself has significantly changed.
So, in the era of industrial society, industrial production was considered the main branch of the national economy. It was based on mass production, which went down in history as Fordism - on behalf of Henry Ford, who first used this method of organization in his automobile factory. The key components of mass production at that time were:
- rationalization - the alignment of each labor action on the simplest operations and the definition of such a sequence that would lead to the most rapid production;
- standardization of parts and processes - reducing the diversity of operations in order to reduce time costs;
- continuous production pipelining - increasing the volume of manufactured products and reducing their cost.
Thus, mass production provided a large increase in labor productivity and significant resource savings.
However, in the future, society faced the first problems of such an organization. Mass production of goods oversaturated the market with similar products, and consumer demand shifted more and more towards exclusive goods. This individualization of demand has forced most industrial enterprises to change the way they manufacture and begin to use multipurpose software-controlled equipment, which is still used today.
The widespread introduction of such flexible production systems is the main feature of the organization of modern production. Due to this, the volume of products can still be large, but the product has a diverse assortment.
Problems of modern production
In modern conditions of economic development, manufacturing enterprises are faced with important problems:
- Any type of production requires constant technical modernization. For the activity to be effective and profitable, it is necessary to ensure production growth, increase competitiveness, and expand the markets for the sale of goods. To implement these tasks, technological modernization should be applied.
- Deficit of financing and material and technical base. In such conditions, enterprises are not able to develop, introduce new technologies and innovations, and master the highest level of production.
- Underdeveloped research work in the field of the enterprise. This problem negatively affects the state of industry as a whole. Imperfect knowledge, a lack of development and modern research lead to a gradual decline in activity and a decrease in the rate of growth of production.
- Deterioration of social conditions at the enterprise, which leads to a sharp outflow of qualified personnel. The lack of specialists negatively affects the development of industry.
These problems can be solved by investing in modern production technologies. To do this, you can use the internal capital of the enterprise or attract financing from the outside.
Modern production and ecology
Production is largely related to nature. Modern industry uses natural resources in large volumes. As a result of this, nature is depleted, people's health is deteriorating, and their living conditions. This problem is so urgent that the governments of all countries have set themselves the task of compulsory keeping records of the environmental factor.
This decision made significant changes in the production of modern enterprises. They are forced to switch to waste-free and resource-saving technologies, use protective and purification devices, and carry out scientific research and environmental protection research.