By: Michael E. Martinez

A Production push is when a manufacturer makes a product and sends it to a business to sell the product. Its then up to that business to find buyers for the product. A production pull is when a manufacturer makes products from actual orders from their customers, where the company would have to make the product when it was requested by the customer. An industry that currently uses the push method are the clothing and shoe manufacturers. If you want to buy a pair of Nike's you can go to the Nike outlet store or to the Footlocker, pick out what you want, pay for it and walk away.

How would it be if you went into a Nike store, got sized for your shoes, told them what color and style you wanted, then had to wait three weeks for delivery? It would be hard for a company like Nike to all of a sudden start making individual, custom orders. The shoes are made on a mass production plan; to stop and make individual shoes will require a company like Nike to make quite a few adjustments. They would have to hire more workers, redo their layouts on how the shoes are made; they would also have to redo their material ordering systems from their suppliers. I think the end result of this would be very expensive shoes.

There are a lot of companies that use both production push and pull, but one of the companies that just uses the pull method would be Dell computers. When you want to order a computer, each computer is made especially for you based on your needs. You can add or take away certain features before buying; however, Dell outlet stores are now popping up where you don't necessarily have to custom order online, you can talk directly to a representative in say a mall. If they shifted to production push, they would make up the computers in bulk and deliver them to such stores as Best Buy and Circuit City.

The downside to this is no custom orders and many consumers would be buying older computers. Most companies that deal with production push and pull choose one that's best for their industry. What works for Dell won't work for Nike. The main job of production and operation managers is to see that the workers and the machines can effectively take material and resources and turn them into finished goods and services. A company may find that a production push method may work for them at first, until the product is out and widely used. They may find that the pull method, in the future, for some of their products if not all of them, may work better.

In the world in which we live today, I feel there are two types of consumers, ones that like to go out, buy a product and get it right away, and the other is willing to wait to get something that they really want custom made for their needs; even if it requires spending a little more money and waiting a few weeks. Several industries that use production push methods are supermarkets, auto companies, the clothing industry, the gas and oil industry and more. Companies that use the production pull methods that include actual customer orders are a few specialty car makers, computers, specialty houses and contractors.

One of the industries that use both to create an effective business is the housing industry. Sometimes you can go to a new housing development where model homes are being shown where you can go in and tour the home; and decide from there, what you want to do with the home to make it appealing to you. On the other hand, some housing developments are already built just waiting for people to move in.