Assembly is a manufacturing process in which individual parts or groups of parts are added to a product in a sequential manner to create an end product.
In most cases, a manufacturing assembly line is a semi-automated system i.e. a conveyor or through which a base item moves. At each station along the line, a part of the production or assembly process takes place until the finished item is complete.
The workers and machinery used to produce the finished item remain stationary along the line as the incomplete assembly moves through the cycle, from start to finish.
Assembly line production processes were originally introduced in the early part of the twentieth century to increase factory output and efficiency. This new way of working fundamentally transformed the design of production facilities across many business sectors.
The introduction of assembly-line production reduced the time to manufacture products and encouraged change management to be introduced. Change Management is a systemic approach to dealing with the transition or transformation of an organisation goals, processes or technologies.
Improvements in these assembly line processes have led to today’s modern assembly-line methods. Manufacturing has become a highly refined process attempting to add value to the assembly as it passes down the production line.
Assembly manufacturing is best described as a series of synchronised processes that feed into continually moving assembly line.
Due to the number of processes that can take place in the assembly of a motor car, for example, a sophisticated computer system is required to control material flow and production schedules.
It is worth noting that an assembly line is one continuous process. Therefore a failure at one point in the assembly line will cause a slowdown or halt to the assembly from that point forward. Keeping the entire system running smoothly requires great coordination between the parts of the system.
Assembly line methodologies relate not just to improvements in technology and planning but to individual factors that relate to an organisation or the industry in which they are based.
The limitations of capital can have an impact on a small organisations strategy to introduce/improve assembly line production methods while changes in legislations with the availability of materials can determine the assembly line of an organisation.