Assembly line
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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 first used by Henry Ford and his engineers. Ford was also the very first to build factories around that concept. It is widely considered to be the catalyst which initiated the modern consumer culture.
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[edit] History
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 that they would fit together and work together; the so-called English System of manufacture. The revolutionary Model T assembly line was introduced to Ford Motor Company by William C. Klann 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 of an assembly line 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 Lewis.[2] [3] [4] When the first car was completed using the assembly line, in front of the media, onlookers and even Henry Ford himself, it was Pa Klann who drove it proudly off the line.
As a result, Henry Ford's cars came off the assembly line in three minute intervals, a speed much faster than previous methods.
Eli Whitney is sometimes credited with developing the American 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. 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, although the 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. The Block assembly line was so successful that 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.
Henry Ford's engineers perfected the assembly line concept by 1906, and Ford was the first to build entire factories around the concept, which was also referred to as the armory system. The assembly line was an evolution by trial and error and 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 conveyor belt, and production by 1916 was 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 $850 in 1909, and $290 by 1924. Ford had 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. 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.
The Ford Motor Company at one point considered suing other car companies because they used the assembly line in their production, they decided against it because they realized it was essential to creation and expansion of the industry as a whole.
[edit] Sociological problems
Some theories 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. However, work on the assembly line sometimes still proved to be dangerous, as is the case with the operation of most heavy machinery.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- We-Min Chow. Assembly Line Design (1990)
[edit] External links
- Listen to “The Terror of the Machine” by Henry Ford Free mp3 audio download from ThoughtAudio.com
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