Assembly Lines

One of the earliest examples of conflict between the power of machines and the power of man surrounded the productivity of assembly lines. Although we tend to look at assembly lines as common sense innovations today, the fact is that these integral parts of the manufacturing industry were only conceived in the early part of the 20th century. This makes them less than one century old!

First used within the auto industry, assembly lines were quickly adopted across the manufacturing sector, with people at each station assisting in the construction of everything from fabricated strainers to construction grade plywood. Runners would take the pieces from one station to the next.

The appearance of the assembly line began to change when the person who conceived of the notion implemented an important industrial innovation into his plant. Henry Ford put the conveyor belts on his plant assembly lines in 1913, revolutionizing the quantity and speed at which his vehicles were then put together. From the engine components down to the front auto plate on the frame, vehicles (and parts) could now be assembled from one end of a plant to another without the need for humans to transport them.

Thus began the gradual phasing out of human labour when it came to assembly lines. Today, a pneumatic conveying system is a common site in manufacturing plants of all sorts. Coupled with computer interfaces, often provided by a PCB designer, these systems not only move products along, they also stop for additions all on their own. Moreover, these additions are now not put in by human hands, but by the advanced robotics that have taken their place.

The loss of human jobs within the manufacturing industry due to the technological innovations has typically been a sore point with workers and potential workers. However, how negatively has machinery really affected employment at the assembly line level?

To be sure, an assembly line will no longer include twenty or thirty employees in today's manufacturing world. However, the need for human labour has never been eliminated altogether. While sheet metal fabricating equipment, for example, may get the job done one hundred times faster than a group of humans could, there is still a need for human involvement on the assembly line. Humans are needed to judge the outcome of the machine work, often to load and unload the product, and of course to ensure the proper operation of the machine itself.

As a final note, we should point out that many modern assembly lines in several industries actually employ both machine and human labour. While powered belts are used to convey products from one point to another, there are still many industries in which human labour is used at different stations. Due to cost effectiveness or expertise, there continues to be a need for humans at the assembly line level in many industries. Thus, the example of the assembly line serves as a good illustration when it comes to the marriage of man and machine in a labour context.