Assembly line

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Image:A-line1913.jpg

An assembly line is a manufacturing process in which interchangeable parts are added to a product in a sequential manner to create a finished product. The assembly line was improved largely by Henry Ford and his engineers, Ford was also the first to build factories around the concept. It usually consists of each worker in control of one specific job and their work related movements are reduced to a minimum.

1 History
2 Sociological problems
3 See also
4 References

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History

Until the 19th century, a single craftsman or team of craftsmen would create each part of a product individually, and assemble them together into a single item, making changes in the parts so that they would fit together - the so-called English System of manufacture.

Eli Whitney developed the American System of manufacturing in 1799, using the ideas of division of labor and of engineering tolerance, to create assemblies from parts in a repeatable manner. Ransom Eli Olds patented the first assembly line concept which he put to work in his Olds Motor Vehicle Company factory in 1901, becoming the first company in America to mass-produce automobiles.

Henry Ford's engineers perfected the assembly line concept by 1913, and Ford was the first to build entire factories around the concept. Assembly line was an evolution at Ford by trial and error not any single event. It was a team effort consisting primarily of Peter E. Martin, the factory superintendent; Charles E. Sorensen, Martin’s assistant; C.Harold Wills, draftsman and toolmaker; Clarence W. Avery and Charles Lewis, a first line supervisor. They added the conveyer belt, and production by 1916 made over 700,000 model T's --twice the output of all competitors combined. The increased efficiency allowed Ford to cut prices in half, and in half again, selling the car for $360 in 1916, and $290 by 1924. He made 15 million model T's by 1927. He integrated the assembly line concept with many ideas from the Efficiency Movement, including the famous $5 day that attracted the best workers. Complex safety procedures --especially assigning each worker to a specific location instead of allowing them to roam about--dramatically reduced the rate of injury. The combination of high wages and high efficiency is called "Fordism," and was copied by most major industries.

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Sociological problems

Some theoretical sociologists assumed that workers must have felt alienated from the product of their work. Actual studies of workers did not reveal the predicted alienation. See Hawthorne Experiment Because workers had to stand in the same place for hours and repeat the same motion hundreds of times per day, some might have suffered from what are now called repetitive stress injuries, but Ford installed his own medical department with industrial nurses, and they reduced the accident and injury rate.

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