Assembly Line

An assembly line is a system of mass production in which a product is manufactured in a step-by-step process as it moves continuously past an arrangement of workers and machines. Introduced in the nineteenth century, it provided the basis for the modern methods of mass production of quantities of standardized, relatively low-cost goods available to great numbers of consumers. As one of the most powerful productivity concepts in history, it was largely responsible for the emergence and expansion of the industrialized, consumer-based system we have today.