![]() This brought new vehicle prices down considerably and put cars into the hands of people that formerly couldn't afford such a luxury. Having the product come to the worker and assigning the worker to perform the same task on each car made production much more efficient and brought the cost of producing the cars down, too. In fact, every three minutes, a completed car rolled off the production line. At Ford's original factory, a Ford Model T could be assembled in 93 minutes from start to finish. Because each worker had one task and worked on just one car at a time, it meant that hundreds of cars were being built simultaneously throughout the factory. A car would arrive at the station, and the worker would perform the specified task - over and over again on each car that came by. Ford's line assigned workers to one specific production task. While Olds' assembly line for cars may have been the first, Henry Ford's assembly line was built on essentially the same idea and was far more efficient. Ford's assembly line was actually based on a slaughterhouse's de-assembly line. However, the reason most people think Henry Ford invented the automotive production line is because Ford took the idea and improved it. His assembly line allowed him to be the first mass-producer of cars in the United States, and he dominated the American automotive industry from 1901 to 1904. Olds had worked on cars for most of his life, including steam-powered cars in the 1880s and 1890s. While many people think that Henry Ford invented the automotive assembly line, it was actually invented by Ransom Eli Olds. The shift to add machines into the production process made it possible to mass produce a variety of products - including cars. The process was faster, and because the labor was unskilled, it was cheaper, too. #Packaging machines for automize production lines how to#Instead of knowing how to sew, workers simply had to run fabric through a sewing machine. For instance, instead of having to find a worker who knew how to cut hat fabric to fit a pattern, a milliner now only needed to find a person who could load fabric into a cutting machine. Also, with more machinery involved, the people making the product could be less skilled. With a more mechanized process, however, people soon discovered the process could move a lot faster. Still, those jobs required a little skill, and the process was a bit on the slow side. For example, a milliner might have one person at home cutting hat patterns, while another assembled fake flowers, another tied ribbons into bows and another sewed the fabric together, and finally another person assembled the finished hat. Initially, people were still doing semi-skilled labor in their own homes. When craftspeople began parsing out the individual tasks involved in building a specific product, they found that the work went a little faster. It also made the goods that craftspeople made very expensive. In addition, it may take several years of training to become a skilled craftsperson. The only problem with this system is that it's very time consuming. And later, you'll read about the most recent innovations in automotive production, including companies that mass produce cars without using traditional production lines, and even a few car companies that still hand-build cars. We'll also explore how the American economy changed as people moved from farm or craftwork to production line work. You'll learn the basic principles behind an automotive production line and the web of jobs that are tied to them. While all assembly lines are interesting, in this article we're going to explore automotive production lines. At the same time, the relatively high wages and good benefits offered by automotive manufacturers helped pull many families into the American middle class, changing America's social makeup for generations to come. Also, because of the massive number of workers needed to staff these lines, millions of Americans moved away from farms and into the cities, transforming the economy from one based on agriculture to one based on manufacturing. This price reduction meant more people could afford to buy a vehicle of their own. Because of the increase in efficiency, the cost to produce a car went down and when production costs were lowered, so was the retail price of the cars. Automotive production lines revolutionized the automotive industry, as well as American life. We've all seen production or assembly lines, either in documentaries or in movies like Charlie Chaplain's "Modern Times," or in the famous chocolate factory scene from "I Love Lucy." But one of the most interesting and complex products that's built in a line system is cars and trucks. ![]()
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