What is a job shop? | The Industrial Capitalist

A job shop is a manufacturer that makes what the customer orders, in the quantity ordered, and then makes something different for the next customer. Machine shops, fabrication shops, and many welding and coating businesses are job shops. The opposite model is production manufacturing: the same product, in volume, on a line designed for it.

How a job shop works

Quoting. Every job is priced from a drawing: material, machine time, set-up, finishing, and margin. The estimator is often the most valuable person in the building.
Scheduling. Dozens of jobs move through shared machines in different orders. Keeping the expensive machines busy and the promised dates honest is the daily puzzle.
Set-up. Because runs are short, the time to change a machine over from one job to the next is a large share of the cost, and reducing it is where shops win or lose.
Customers. Usually other manufacturers and industrial companies, won by reputation, turnaround, and the ability to hold tolerances.

The business

A job shop’s capital is in its machines, and its earnings are in its people. Growth usually comes from specializing: a material, a process, an industry, or a size of part that other shops cannot handle. The most common path to a larger business is moving from pure job work toward repeat contracts with a few good customers, without becoming dependent on any one of them.