Information about Assembly Line

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 best known form of the assembly line, the moving assembly line, was created by Henry Ford. The idea of the assembly line was taken from the idea of "disassembly lines" by his engineers. Ford was the first businessman to build factories around that concept. It is widely considered to be the catalyst which initiated the modern consumer culture.

History

While the idea was not new, being used in the manufacture of firearms during the American Civil War and in the Connecticut clock industry,^[1] until the twentieth century, a single craftsman or team of craftsmen would normally create each part of a product individually and assemble them together into a single item, making changes in the parts so they would fit and work together (the so-called English System).

Eli Whitney is sometimes credited with developing the armory system of manufacturing in 1801, using the ideas of division of labor and of engineering tolerance, to create assemblies from parts in a repeatable manner, but Whitney's contribution was mostly as a popularizer rather than a true contributor to repeatability. (He was one of the first to use interchangeable parts, and the first to do so in the making of firearms.)

Another assembly line had already been in use in England for 100 years, having been invented in 1801 by Marc Isambard Brunel (Father of Isambard Kingdom Brunel) for the production of blocks for the Royal Navy. This assembly line was so successful it remained in use until the 1960s, with the workshop still visible at HM Dockyard in Portsmouth, and still containing some of the original machinery.

Ransom Olds patented the 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, contrary to the Ford myth. The assembly line was introduced to Ford Motor Company by Mike Campion upon his return from visiting a Chicago slaughterhouse and viewing what was referred to the "disassembly line" where animals were butchered as they moved along a conveyor. The efficiency of one person removing the same piece over and over caught his attention. He reported the idea to Peter E. Martin, who was doubtful at the time but encouraged him to proceed. Others at Ford have claimed to have put the idea forth to Henry Ford, but William "Pa" Klann's slaughterhouse revelation is well documented in the archives at the Henry Ford Museum and elsewhere, making him the father of the modern automated assembly line concept. The process was an evolution by trial and error of a team consisting primarily of Peter E. Martin, the factory superintendent; Charles E. Sorensen, Martin's assistant; Harold Wills, draftsman and toolmaker; Clarence W. Avery; and Charles Ebender. When the first car was completed using the assembly line, in front of the media, onlookers, Henry Ford himself, it was Pa Klann who drove it proudly off the line.

As a result, Ford's cars came off the line in three minute intervals, much faster than previous methods, increasing production by seven to one (requiring 12.5 man-hours before, 1 hour 33 minutes after), while using less manpower.^[2] It was so successful, paint became a bottleneck. Only Japan black would dry fast enough, forcing the company to drop the variety of colors available before 1914, until fast-drying Durco lacquer was developed in 1926.^[3] In 1914, an assembly line worker could buy a Model T with four months' pay.^[4]

Ford's 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. The efficiency gains from the assembly line also coincided with the take off of the United States. The assembly line forced workers to work at a certain pace with very repetitive motions which led to more output per worker while other countries were using less productive methods.

Ford at one point considered suing other car companies because they used the assembly line in their production, but decided against, realizing it was essential to creation and expansion of the industry as a whole.

In the automotive industry, its success was dominating, and quickly spread worldwide. Ford France and Ford Britain in 1911, Ford Denmark 1923, Ford Germany 1925; in 1921, Citroen was the first native European manufactuer to adopt it. Soon, companies had to have assembly lines, or risk going broke; by 1930, 250 companies which did not had disappeared.^[5]

Sociological problems

Some sociological theories assume that workers must feel alienated because of the repetition of the same specialized task all day long ^[6]. Because workers have to stand in the same place for hours and repeat the same motion hundreds of times per day, repetitive stress injuries are a possible pathology of occupational safety. Industrial noise also proved dangerous. When it was not too high, workers were often prohibited from talking. Charles Piaget, a skilled worker at the LIP factory, recalled that beside being prohibited from speaking, the semi-skilled workers had only 25 centimeters in which to move ^[7]. Industrial ergonomics later tried to minimize physical traumatisms.

Another problem often faced was low pay; while workers did not need to be skilled, due to the simplistic nature of the work, the pay usually was not enough to compensate for the dangerous nature of these jobs, and workers were often poor immigrants struggling to sustain themselves and their families. The inadequate pay often led to strikes, which were responded to with further injustices (such as simply replacing all of the striking workers with more desperate immigrants.)

See also

• Chevrolet
• Industrial Engineering
• Henry Ford

References

Bibliography

• We-Min Chow. Assembly Line Design (1990)

External links

• Listen to “The Terror of the Machine” by Henry Ford Free mp3 audio download from ThoughtAudio.com

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