Production Line Efficiency

Chapter 1

Introduction

Rise of the Assembly Line

When we think of an assembly line, our imaginations probably take us straight to the modern factory floor with images of machines, robots, and people engaged in assembling complex products that roll off the production line in a never-ending process. The basic concept of the assembly line, however, with individual workers specializing in just one or two specific tasks and creating a whole final product from the total efforts of the team of specialists, is not that new. A rather impressive example of mass production can be found in the Terracotta army commissioned by the Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi (215 BC), where different artisan workshops created particular body parts that were later assembled ...