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Assembly Line: Products
built 613 days ago
The idea of the assembly line has many parents. In the scientific revolution of the eighteenth century, scientists, especially mathematicians tried to quantify what made an industry productive and tried to find ways to make industries more productive. The goal was to create an industry that functioned without human labor. The most important people of the time for the development of the assembly line were the Americans Oliver Evans and Eli Whitney and the Frenchman Gaspard Monge. Evans is known for his invention of the first motorized amphibious vehicle, but his most influential achievement was to design a flour mill. During the late eighteenth century, he used steam engines to power mills that used belt and screw conveyors, as well as moving hoppers, to move grain through the process of becoming flour and then to move the flour to where it could be packaged.
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The assembly line was not a new idea in 1913. It had been used in various places throughout history, but it does not appear that the idea was ever brought forward from earlier times. Most likely, each time a need for mass-production came along, the problems were worked out and then the whole concept was lost when there was no longer a need for the items that were being produced. In other words, it appears that each new instance of mass-production required independent reinvention of this technique. As with so many things, the idea was used during the classical period, but then it was lost until the Renaissance.
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The new assembly line consists of eight interlinked but independently operated workstations. About 60 wheelchairs can be assembled per hour on the new line. The linear system stretches 14 meters and consists of 10 workpiece carriers that can be aligned in four possible directions. The carrier return system is located underneath the production line and is triggered at the push of a button.
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This linear assembly process or assembly line, allowed relatively unskilled laborers to add simple parts to a product, as all the parts were already made, they just had to be stuck in place. While there was still a requirement for the craftsmen to blueprint the design for mass production, they were no longer required for the actual assembly. While originally not of the quality found in hand made units, designs using an assembly line process required less knowlege from the assemblers, and therefor could be created for a lower cost.
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After Ford's success in applying assembly line methods to the flywheel magneto, as many manufacturing processes as possible were divided into a series of single work tasks that could be performed along a moving conveyor. By April 1914 Ford had introduced an electrically driven endless chain conveyor that moved the auto chassis down the line. This enabled Ford to increase production from about 475 cars in a nine-hour day to more than 1,200 auto assemblies in an eight-hour day. Ford tripled its production and reduced labor time per vehicle by nearly 90 percent.
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With a Camry Hybrid rolling off the assembly line in Kentucky today, Toyota begins their first wave of North American production for their ultra-successful hybrid-electric vehicles. Since Toyota began selling hybrid vehicles in North America in 2000, the company has sold approximately 420,000 of them on these shores.
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