Hershey’s Homework Essay

1. Does Hershey use process manufacturing or the assembly process? Is the production of Hershey’s chocolate an intermittent or continuous productions process? Justify your answers.

Hershey uses both process manufacturing and the assembly process to produce and manufacture their products. Process manufacturing is used during the chocolate creation phase by combining various ingredients together, such as cocoa beans, milk and sugar, that cannot be disassembled back into their original components. The assembly process is used when different components are combined together, such as chocolate and almonds to make a Hershey’s candy bar with almonds, or chocolate and peanut butter to make Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, which is then followed by the automated packaging process.

In the production of Hershey’s chocolate a continuous process is used because different processes are performed using multiple machines with long production runs to turn out the finished product over time. For example, the cleaning of the imported cocoa beans takes place on one machine while the sorting, roasting and blending of the beans take place on different machines and when all of those processes and components (addition of milk, sugar etc.

) are complete the chocolate must be refined and go through the conching process for up to 72 hours.

The ingredients being processed in order to make the chocolate are continuously in motion, undergoing chemical reactions (chocolate liquor) that require heat to properly formulate. Shutting down and starting up Hershey’s continuous chocolate making process would more than likely result in a poor quality product that would need to be reprocessed or disposed of, therefore, the factory operates 24 hours per day, seven days per week with infrequent maintenance shutdowns (Hersheys.com).