Assembly

Assembly involves putting a product together from component parts. Assembly lines involve dividing up tasks and organizing them sequentially to build multiple copies of the same product. Workers on assembly lines typically perform a single, simpletask, and parts move on conveyor belts as workers pick up these parts and install them. Historically, assembly line production techniques were adopted to increase efficiency, standardization, and control over workers. There were several early examples of assembly lines. Venetian ship factories in the early 16th century used assembly lines to produce a ship in a day. Adam Smith's pin factory example of the division of labor was similar, but it used a minimal assembly process. Eli Whitney used interchangeable parts to make agricultural machines, and in the mid-1800s, Samuel Colt used a full assembly line with interchangeable parts to produce his famous revolver. Batch production is also assembly, but it involves totally completing one item before working on the next (e.g., most house construction). C. Berggren showed that batch techniques had promise with car assembly in Sweden, but the experiment at the Uddevalla plant closed after four years.

In the late 1800s, Frederick Taylor's idea of scientific management, or Taylorism, was not actually assembly since it focused on machine shops, but many of his principles of applying science to management influenced the development of the assembly process. Henry Ford began producing the Ford Model T in 1913 on a moving assembly line after he was inspired by what he heard about meat-packing operations in Chicago (i.e., carcass disassembly). The result of his production methods was cars produced every three minutes. It was important to keep the assembly line moving (machine utilization) in order to maximize production. This was a “push” system and involved assembly line production in large amounts.

Antonio Gramsci first defined Fordism in his essay “Americanism and Fordism,” including three principles: standardized or interchangeable parts; special-purpose tools to make assembly lines possible, especially for low-skilled workers; and workers paid enough to afford the products that they make, which, according to Eli Chinoy, allowed them to enter the middle class (the American dream). Henry Ford consolidated these principles when he built his enormous Rouge River plant on the southern Detroit border after World War I. “McDonaldization” is sociologist George Ritzer's extension of Fordism to the fast-food industry, and the extension of the principles of McDonald's and the assembly-line production of food to broader [Page 7]culture. Ritzer highlighted the four main components of McDonaldization as efficiency, calculability, standardization (predictability), and control.

Lean production, or Toyotism, because it originated with Toyota, is a “pull” system that emphasizes efficiency, eliminating waste, and adding value. Ideally, consumer demand “pulls” the assembly process into action. Activities that do not add value are waste (called muda) and should be reduced as much as possible. As a pull system, lean production represents a major change from Fordism. The quality of manufactured products is now of much more concern than machine utilization. When cars were pushed through the assembly line to be completed as quickly as possible, production and demand were not linked in any way, and storage costs for excess inventory could be excessive. The pull system of lean production utilizes the ideas of “one piece flow” and just-in-time inventory management, which ironically was described but never implemented by Henry Ford. Lean production also allows workers mental input into the production process through quality control circles. When a worker detects a quality problem during production, he or she can pull an andon cord and stop the assembly line to fix it. In lean production, the idea of kaizen, or “continuous improvement,” keeps quality a top priority.

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