Product-Process Matrix
The Product-Process Matrix lines your product and your process up across four stages each - one-of-a-kind through commodity, job shop through continuous flow - and shows the mismatch costing you money when the two fall off the diagonal.
Rows and columns each carry four stages, and a diagonal band cuts through where product and process line up.
Reach for this when…
- You're running a job-shop process for a product that's basically standardised now.
- Volumes have grown but the factory floor still runs like a prototype shop.
- You're deciding whether to invest in automation or stay flexible.
How to run it
- Place your process on its four stages, from job shop through batch and assembly line to continuous flow.
- Place your product on its four stages, from one-of-a-kind through multiple products and standardised to commodity.
- Mark where you actually sit today - most businesses aren't as far along as they think.
- Check whether product and process line up on the diagonal, or have drifted apart.
- Move deliberately: automate as the product standardises, or protect flexibility if it hasn't.
A worked example
Situation. Yerlan Abenov ran Abenov Mebel, a furniture workshop in Almaty, Kazakhstan, still building every order on a flexible job-shop line even though 80% of orders were now for three standard chair designs.
Applied. He mapped product against process and found the standard chairs sitting far off the diagonal - a standardised, high-volume product still running on a custom job-shop process.
Result. He moved the three standard designs to a dedicated assembly line and kept the job shop for bespoke work, cutting the standard chairs' lead time by half.
The catch
The matrix assumes a stable product mix, and a business selling both bespoke and standard work at once - as most do - sits at more than one point across the four stages, which the diagonal doesn't handle well. It also pushes toward automation as the answer, which is expensive to reverse if volume drops again.
Running a job shop for a standardised product isn't flexibility, it's an expensive habit.
Origin: Hayes & Wheelwright