Continuous Product Flow and Made To Stock

Coca Cola as a bottling company uses the continuous flow method of manufacturing. As we know, continuous flow may be defined as the so called process industries which refer to manufacturing goods such as beer, paper, oil, and electricity, where in this case it would be a soft drink company. Here, the products are made in a continuous fashion and tend to be highly standardized and automated with very high volumes of production. The production flow of Coca Cola involves passing sub-assemblies/parts from one stage of production to another in a regular flow. Each stage adds to the products, this is typical among bottling plants. Coke used this method because the products being distributed by the company are in wide variation and is sold in bulk amounts. Products being distributed range from the bottled goods such as Coke, Diet Coke, an assorted amount of different flavored soft drinks, to bottled water. Given that Coca Cola has such a large range of production, continuous flow is the best way to produce the products.

The type of customer order which Coca Cola uses to process goods is the Made to Stock method. The MTS type of ordering system works very well with Coca Cola as a manufacturer. This process can help to provide faster service to customers from available stock and lower costs considering Coke normally has a distribution process of bulk items. Normally when customers order Coca Cola products, it is in a bulk amount when distributing through a B2B operation. When customers are purchasing individual bottles of Coke, it is after the process of the wholesale item being sold to a business, and afterwards the business will distribute each single item to their customers, making profit off of the product since they bought it in bulk from the Coca Cola company. The MTS method of customer order has a process where a standard product line is specified by the producer, not by the customer and therefore products are carried in inventory to immediately fulfill customer demand. Suppose Coke Cola used a Made to Order customer process, they would never distribute their goods in a fast enough fashion due to the high demand of customers that the company possesses.