Reference
- Assembly-Line Manufacturing: Credo ReferenceDeveloped in the early twentieth century, assembly-line methods have greatly increased the efficiency and productivity of manufacturing by breaking tasks down to the smallest detail. A typical assembly line uses a conveyor belt or other machinery to move a product from one workstation to the next. Each laborer performs one simple operation in the production process so that by the time the product reaches the end of the line, it has undergone many different operations and is completely finished. By increasing production and efficiency, the assembly line system allows businesses to put more of their products on the market while lowering the costs of production. This, in turn, decreases the cost of the product to consumers.
Streaming Media
- The Dessau Bauhaus: Architectures—Achievements in Modern ArchitectureBuilt in 1926, the Bauhaus at Dessau remains Walter Gropius' most important building and one of the most famous examples of twentieth-century architecture. This higher academy of the arts connected crafts and art to industrial design where artists, filmmakers and furniture designers joined teachers like Klee and Kandinski. The glass walls, angles and flat roofs were new and became a landmark for modern architecture. Gropius influenced industrial architecture in the U.S. where he died in 1969. The Bauhaus is now a World Heritage Site.
- Mass ProductionManufacturers began to mass-produce products they could sell cheaply and in large numbers through nationwide advertising campaigns. Henry Ford perfected the automobile assembly line in 1914, reduced the price of cars, and raised his workers' wages, which increased their loyalty and made them potential buyers.
- Mass Production Wins World War IIReflect on how industry and technology contributed to the phenomenal destructiveness of World War II and helped the Allies win the war. With the Soviet Union's mass-produced tanks and aircraft and US and British bombers and special weaponry, the Allies were well prepared to defeat the industrially weakened Germans.
- Mass-Producing Bicycles and CarsInterchangeable parts and mass production took the Industrial Revolution to a new level. Beginning with the bicycle industry in the 1870s and continuing through the rise of automobiles in the 20th century, this episode shows how mechanized transportation not only changed the world for consumers, it also transformed the business of factory labor.
Perspectives
From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932
David A. Houndshell's widely acclaimed history explores the American "genius for mass production" and races its origins in the nineteenth-century "American system" of manufacture. Previous writers on the American system have argued that the technical problems of mass production had been solved by armsmakers before the Civil War. Drawing upon the extensive business and manufacturing records if leading American firms, Hounshell demonstrates that the diffusion of arms production technology was neither as fast now as smooth as had been assumed. Exploring the manufacture of sewing machines and furniture, bicycles and reapers, he shows that both the expression "mass production" and the technology that lay behind it were developments of the twentieth century, attributable in large part to the Ford Motor Company. Hounshell examines the importance of individuals in the diffusion and development of production technology and the central place of marketing strategy in the success of selected American manufacturers. Whereaas Ford was the seedbed of the assembly line revolution, it was General motors that initiated a new era with its introduction of the annual model change. With the new marketing strategy, the technology of "the changeover" became of paramount importance. Hounshell chronicles how painfully Ford learned this lesson and recounts how the successful mass production of automobiles led to the establishment of an "ethos of mass production," to an era in which propoments of "Fordism" argued that mass production would solve all of America's social problems.
Rivethead
The man the Detroit Free Press calls "a blue collar Tom Wolfe" delivers a full-barreled blast of truth and gritty reality in Rivethead, a no-holds-barred journey through the belly of the American industrial beast.
Assembly Line Design
This book attempts to treat line design and its related subjects in a cohesive manner, with an emphasis on design applications. It discusses general guidelines for setting up assumptions and determining line performance parameters, based on empirical data from literature reports.
Our Assembly Line
Anyone can learn computer science, even at the elementary school level. This book delves into the essential computer science concept of parallelization using age-appropriate language and colorful illustrations. A meaningful storyline is paired with an accessible curricular topic to engage and excite readers. This book introduces readers to a relatable character and familiar situation, which demonstrates how parallelization is used in everyday life. Readers will follow a class as they work at the same time to create something, like an assembly line. This fiction book is paired with the nonfiction book The Amazing Assembly Line (ISBN: 9781508137528). The instructional guide on the inside front and back covers provides: Vocabulary, Background knowledge, Text-dependent questions, Whole class activities, and Independent activities.
The Color Line and the Assembly Line
The Color Line and the Assembly Line tells a new story of the impact of mass production on society. Global corporations based originally in the United States have played a part in making gender and race everywhere. Focusing on Ford Motor Company's rise to become the largest, richest, and most influential corporation in the world, The Color Line and the Assembly Line takes on the traditional story of Fordism. Contrary to popular thought, the assembly line was perfectly compatible with all manner of racial practice in the United States, Brazil, and South Africa. Each country's distinct racial hierarchies in the 1920s and 1930s informed Ford's often divisive labor processes. Confirming racism as an essential component in the creation of global capitalism, Elizabeth Esch also adds an important new lesson showing how local patterns gave capitalism its distinctive features.
Online Resources
- Balancing Multi-Manned Assembly Lines With Walking Workers: Problem Definition, Mathematical Formulation, and an Electromagnetic Field Optimisation AlgorithmAssembly lines are widely used in industrial environments that produce standardised products in high volumes. Multi-manned assembly line is a special version of them that allows simultaneous operation of more than one worker at the same workstation. These lines are widely used in large-sized product manufacturing since they have many advantages over the simple one. This article has dealt with multi-manned assembly line balancing problem with walking workers for minimising the number of workers and workstations as the first and second objectives, respectively. A linear mixed-integer programming formulation of the problem has been firstly addressed after the problem definition is given. Besides that, a metaheuristic based on electromagnetic field optimisation algorithm has been improved. In addition to the classical electromagnetic field optimisation algorithm, a regeneration strategy has been applied to enhance diversification. A particle swarm optimisation algorithm from assembly line balancing literature has been modified to compare with the proposed algorithm. A group of test instances from many precedence diagrams were generated for evaluating the performances of all solution methods. Deviations from lower bound values of the number of workers/workstations and the number of optimal solutions obtained by these methods are concerned as performance criteria. The results obtained by the proposed programming formulations have been also compared with the solutions obtained by the traditional mathematical model of the multi-manned assembly line. Through the experimental results, the performance of the metaheuristic has been found very satisfactory according to the number of obtained optimal solutions and deviations from lower bound values.
- One- and two-sided assembly line balancing problems with real-world constraintsn this study, we consider balancing problems of one- and two-sided assembly lines with real-world constraints like task or machine incompatibilities. First, we study the one-sided assembly line balancing problem (ALBP) with a limited number of machine types per workstation. Using a genetic algorithm (GA), we find optimal results for real-world instances. A set of larger test cases is used to compare two well-established solution approaches, namely GA and tabu search (TS). Additionally, we apply a specific differential evolution algorithm (DE), which has recently been proposed for the considered ALBP. Our computational results show that DE is clearly dominated by GA. Furthermore, we show that GA outperforms TS in terms of computational time, if capacity constraints are tight. Given the algorithm’s computational performance as well as the fact that it can easily be adapted to additional constraints, we then use it to solve two-sided ALBP. Three types of constraints and two different objectives are considered. We outperform all previously published methods in terms of solution quality and computational time. Finally, we are the first to provide feasible test instances as well as benchmark results for fully constrained two-sided ALB.