Assembly line
Topic: Secondary Activities: Manufacturing and Industrial Location · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 5 "Secondary Activities"
Meaning
An assembly line is a way of making goods in a fixed order of steps. The product moves past a row of workers or robots. Each one adds one part or does one job, again and again. This saves time and lets a factory make large numbers of identical goods, which is called mass production. Henry Ford started the moving assembly line in 1913, and it made cars cheap enough for ordinary people to buy.
Example
At Ford's Highland Park factory in Michigan, USA, the moving assembly line (1913) cut the time needed to put together a Model T car. Later, Toyota's "lean" production in Japan let assembly lines turn out more varieties of a product.
Don't confuse with
- Craft method of production: one skilled worker makes the whole item, often to order. An assembly line splits the work into many small, repeated tasks.
Related concepts
- Craft method of production
- Mass production
- Mechanisation
- Automation
- Division of labour
- Uneven distribution of manufacturing