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An assembly line is an arrangement of machines, equipment, and workers for a continuous flow of pieces in mass production. It determines the sequence of operations for the manufacture of each product. The assembly line is one of the steps for mass production this would make final products inexpensive to the public and much easier to make. Assembly lines made workers work less and made the task simpler. Some of the first ideas of assembly lines came from the 19th century, from meatpacking industries in the U.S.. They had trolleys being pulled by chains. This minimized unnecessary moving, carrying meat for long distances, and increased productivity.
Henry Ford the founder of Ford Motor Company designed his own assembly line in 1913. Ford wrote that the assembly line should be based on three basic principles.
1) The planned, orderly, and continuous progression of the commodity through the shop.
2) The delivery of work instead of leaving it to the workman’s initiative to find it.
3) An analysis of operations into their constituent parts.
This assembly line could reduce the time for creating a new magneto from 20 minutes to 5 minutes. On April of 1913 he began to experiment with his assembly line. He had one of his workman assemble a new magneto using the regular method. He accomplished his task in about 20 minutes. This was then split into 29 individual jobs. This cut down the assembly line time to 13 minutes. A year later it took 7 minutes to build a magneto. These results made Ford more apply these techniques to framework assembly. The fastest workers were able to produce a frame of car was in about 12 hours. Ford experimented with production of the body of the car by drawing one going down the line with an open windlass and a rope. Six assemblers moved along with the chassis (frame) and added parts as they went along. This experiment reduced the production of a individual chassis to about six hours. Ford later elevated the assembly line so it was waist high, and divided the work on a chassis some more, it reduced the time to one hour and 33 minutes. This made Ford able to lower the price on cars, so that an average person could afford one. Fords assembly line opened the door to mass production.
Some devices used on the assembly line included conveyor belts, monorail systems, and pulleys.
The availability on inexpensive, high quality products today can be traced back to Ford’s experiments with the moving assembly line. This cut labor costs and ensured uniformity and precision. They were able to produce inexpensive products on a mass basis. To prevent strikes from workers on assembly lines their work time was reduced to eight hours a day, and were paid $5 a day, this $5 a day method was introduced in 1913
by Henry Ford.
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