Industry- Manufacturing Industry | PART - 1

A quick introduction to Industry!

The companies and activities involved in the process of producing goods for sales, providing services on large scale by multiple revenue generating resources for the betterment of economy is known as an Industry.

The definition of industry is any large scale business of a type of productive manufacture, trade or services are called an Industry.

Industry is segregated into 3 major sections all across the globe:

1. Manufacturing Industry

Manufacturing industry is the branch of manufacture and trade based on the fabrication and processing or producing finished goods as per costumer’s expectations and specifications from raw materials by using dependent components.

2. Service Industry

Service Industry is a group of companies or an organisation which provides all kind of services by generating revenue from it. Starting for them selling of finished goods manufactured by the manufacturing industry to the services provided for mankind like hospitality, transportation, public entertainment etc.

3. Agricultural Industry

An organisation that practices production of crops and livestock from natural resources of the Earth. It is the only industry where production can be done by not using even a single man made product.

In my first article, I would like to write about the manufacturing industry. Covering several points such as what exactly is manufacturing industry, what is its role in Indian economy and lastly, how computer science is incorporated in it.

Manufacturing industry plays a very important role in many places. It is a source of attaining high rate of employment in any country. Any factory or organisation that comes under this industry has various departments which require different employees for different jobs which thereby increase the employment rate of the factory and finally, the country. It acknowledges all classes of employees starting from the lower class workers that work on daily wages to the highly qualified managers, CAs, HRs and other higher posts for different departments. In addition, this sector has a multiplier effect for job creation in the services industry also.

In layman’s language, a country’s economy is directly related to the sale and purchase within and outside the country. Also, how much did each countryman earn in a year. These points are directly related to the employment. More the employment, more is the economic growth of an individual and thereby the country. As per the recent analysis, manufacturing industry’s contribution to the GDP of India is 16%, which is a lot. Which itself states how important manufacturing industry is when we talk about the production and employment of any country.

Manufacturing industry works in a hierarchical and structural manner. It has multiple departments which bifurcate different jobs for the establishment and growth of the industry.

These departments are as follows:-

1. Sampling/Research Department

2. Marketing Department

3. Order management Department

4. Planning Department

• Material requirement planning
• Material purchase planning
• Production planning
• Machinery/Equipment planning
• Electricity consumption planning
• Maintenance planning

5. Purchase Department

6. Production Department

7. Quality Control Department

8. Store Department

9. Documentation Department

10. HR Department 

11. Admin Department

12. Accounts Department

13. Finance Department

14. Electrical Department

15. Maintenance Department

On the basis of this bifurcation of departments, there is another hierarchy that follows for the job which is both departmental and industrial. That hierarchy is as follows:

Industrial Hierarchy

Manufacturing Industries flow diagram :-

Manufacturing Industry Flow Diagram

As I just explained that there are multiple departments in the manufacturing industries, each department has to maintain all activities being held within the department for smooth and genuine working. As I have also shown the interlinking between all the departments in the industry, each department has to work as per the flow diagram i.e. each department has to send their data and information for further actions to be performed by the next department. Doing this manually, can be the most hectic and unwanted job in the world. Also, there will not be any proof whether each department has completed their job as per the given time schedule and if at all they have, then whether the task has been forwarded to the next department or not. Manually, we cannot make a structural and proper planning to get a successful output with an effective cost within the time schedule. In manual management company can run but their growth will not be to their at most and there can be huge loss because of a few fraud people and things can be mishandled and misused. This is where computer science comes into its action in an industry. As I mentioned that each department has to maintain their records, information and day to day activities, industries need a proper computerization which is at both departmental level and industrial level to maintain the records, enhance the quality of production in effective cost with minimum man power in a systematic and structural manner.

All the above mentioned departments also show that a manufacturing industry holds all kind of job vacancies. All these departments vary after computerization. Several other departments are added which provide more vacancies for the computer engineers and other IT professionals.

In my first blog, I would like to conclude that manufacturing industry cannot grow effectively without computerization. For manufacturing industries, it is a necessity to reduce the production cost, produce a qualitative product, minimize the man power, electricity consumption, machinery and equipment maintenance, maintaining day to day records of each department for the analysis of individual performance and thereby the organisation’s performance. This can be done most effectively by computerizing the industry. Software that can provide full resourced planning of an industry is called Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Software.

This article is PART- 1 of series on Industrial Computerization.

I shall talk more about its working in the next few blogs.

Written by

Kritika Kataria