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Article: Assembly Line
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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ASSEMBLY LINE
ASSEMBLY LINE.
The assembly line is often described as a process that uses machines to move material from one place to another, but in practice, machines are not always needed. For instance, mass-market jewelers often use assembly lines in which materials are handed from one worker to another, without the benefit of machinery. At its most basic, an assembly line is a series of stations at which people or machines add to or assemble parts for a product. One of the values of the assembly line is its versatility: it can be simple, but it has the capacity to be very complex. An assembly line can begin as many different lines each devoted to a different component of a product, ...