Product Flow

Lowe's is a huge home improvement retail store. They carry many different sorts of items such as tools, nails, screws, bolts, furniture, wood, etc. It would be hard to say Lowe's only uses one type of product flow because of the variety of items that it sells. Here's what our group came up with...

Continuous/Assembly

The assembly line is used for products that have a high demand and need to be produced in high volume. This is a low cost procedure but it has low flexibility and requires all of the products to be standardized. We think that Lowe's uses the Continuous/Assemble product flow for most of its items. A lot of Lowe's items consist of tools and various things to repair your home such as nails and bolts. Some of these items have a high demand, don't cost much to make, and are highly standardized and they are produced in very high volumes. This lead us to the conclusion that for these types of items Lowe's uses the Coninuous/Assembly product flow method.

Batch Flow/Job Shop

Items that are produced through the Batch Flow or Job Shop product flow type are produced in batches. They share the same machine for different items. Items produced in this way are not too cheep but also not too costly and they are produced at a medium volume as well. We thought Lowe's might also use this type of product flow because it has many other items that are not mass produced such as it's furniture. Lowe's sells things such as cabinets which are not mass produced. They are somewhat customizable and are more costly to make than screws or nails. This led us to the conclusion that Lowe's probably also uses the Batch flow production flow for these types of items.