Mass production (also called flow production, repetitive flow production, series production, or serial production) is the production of large amounts of standardized products, including and especially on assembly lines An assembly line is a manufacturing process in which parts are added to a product in a sequential manner using optimally planned logistics to create a finished product much faster than with handcrafting-type methods. The assembly line developed by Ford Motor Company between 1908 and 1915 made assembly lines famous in the following decade through. The concepts of mass production are applied to various kinds of products, from fluids and particulates handled in bulk (such as food, fuel, chemicals, and mined minerals) to discrete solid parts (such as fasteners) to assemblies of such parts (such as household appliances and automobiles).

Overview

Mass production of assemblies typically uses electric-motor-powered moving tracks or conveyor belts to move partially complete products to workers, who perform simple repetitive tasks. It improves on earlier high-throughput, continuous-flow mass production made possible by the steam engine.

Mass production of fluid and particulate matter typically involves pipes with pumps or augers to transfer partially complete product between vessels.

Mass production is capital intensive Capital intensity is the term in economics for the amount of fixed or real capital present in relation to other factors of production, especially labor. At the level of either a production process or the aggregate economy, it may be estimated by the capital/labor ratio, such as from the points along a capital/labor isoquant and energy intensive, as it uses a high proportion of machinery and energy in relation to workers. It is also usually automated Automation is the use of control systems and information technologies reducing the need for human intervention. In the scope of industrialization, automation is a step beyond mechanization. Whereas mechanization provided human operators with machinery to assist them with the muscular requirements of work, automation greatly reduces the need for to the highest extent possible. With fewer labour costs and a faster rate of production, capital and energy are increased while total expenditure per unit of product is decreased. However, the machinery that is needed to set up a mass production line (such as robots A robot is an automatically guided machine which is able to do tasks on its own, almost always due to electronically-programmed instructions. Another common characteristic is that by its appearance or movements, a robot often conveys a sense that it has intent or agency of its own and machine presses A servomechanism press, also known as a servo press or a 'electro press, is a press driven by an AC servo motor. The torque produced is converted to a linear force via a ball screw. Pressure and position are controlled though a load cell and an encoder. The main advantage of a servo press is its low energy consumption; its only 10-20% of other) is so expensive that there must be some assurance that the product is to be successful to attain profits.

One of the descriptions of mass production is that the craftsmanship is in the workbench A workbench is sturdy table at which manual work is done. They range from simple flat surfaces to very complex designs that may be considered tools in themselves. Workbenches vary in size from tiny jewelers benches to the huge benches used by staircase makers. Almost all workbenches are rectangular in shape, often using the surface, corners and itself, not the training of the worker; for example, rather than having a skilled worker measure every dimension of each part of the product against the plans or the other parts as it is being formed, there are jigs A jig is any of a large class of tools in woodworking, metalworking, and some other crafts that help to control the location or motion of a tool. Some types of jigs are also called or guides. The primary purpose for a jig is for repeatability and exact duplication of a part for reproduction. An example of a jig is when a key is duplicated, the and gauge blocks A gauge block is a precision ground and lapped length measuring standard. It is used as a reference for the setting of measuring equipment used in machine shops, such as micrometers, sine bars, calipers, and dial indicators (when used in an inspection role) that are ready at hand to ensure that the part is made to fit this set-up. It has already been checked that the finished part will be to specifications to fit all the other finished parts - and it will be made more quickly, with no time spent on finishing the parts to fit one another. This is the specialized capital required for mass production; each workbench is different and each set of tools at each workbench limited to those necessary to make one part. As each of these parts is uniformly and consistently constructed, interchangeability of components is thus another hallmark of mass produced goods.

Use of assembly lines in mass production

Mass production systems are usually organized into assembly lines An assembly line is a manufacturing process in which parts are added to a product in a sequential manner using optimally planned logistics to create a finished product much faster than with handcrafting-type methods. The assembly line developed by Ford Motor Company between 1908 and 1915 made assembly lines famous in the following decade through. The assemblies pass by on a conveyor, or if they are heavy, hung from an overhead monorail.

In a factory for a complex product, rather than one assembly line, there may be many auxiliary assembly lines feeding sub-assemblies (i.e. car engines or seats) to a backbone "main" assembly line. A diagram of a typical mass-production factory looks more like the skeleton of a fish than a single line.

Advantages and disadvantages

The economies of mass production come from several sources. The primary cause is a reduction of nonproductive effort of all types. In craft production Craft production is the process of manufacturing by hand with or without the aid of tools. The term Craft production refers to a manufacturing technique applied in the hobbies of Handicraft but was also the common method of manufacture in the pre-industrialized world. For example, the production of pottery uses methods of craft production, the craftsman must bustle about a shop, getting parts and assembling them. He must locate and use many tools many times for varying tasks. In mass production, each worker repeats one or a few related tasks that use the same tool to perform identical or near-identical operations on a stream of products. The exact tool and parts are always at hand, having been moved down the assembly line consecutively. The worker spends little or no time retrieving and/or preparing materials and tools, and so the time taken to manufacture a product using mass production is shorter than when using traditional methods.

The probability of human error and variation is also reduced, as tasks are predominantly carried out by machinery. A reduction in labour costs, as well as an increased rate of production, enables a company to produce a larger quantity of one product at a lower cost than using traditional, non-linear methods.

However, mass production is inflexible because it is difficult to alter a design or production process after a production line is implemented. Also, all products produced on one production line will be identical or very similar, and introducing variety to satisfy individual tastes is not easy. However, some variety can be achieved by applying different finishes and decorations at the end of the production line if necessary.

Vertical integration

Vertical integration In microeconomics and management, the term vertical integration describes a style of management control. Vertically integrated companies in a supply chain are united through a common owner. Usually each member of the supply chain produces a different product or service, and the products combine to satisfy a common need. It is contrasted with is a business practice that involves gaining complete control over a product's production, from raw materials to final assembly.

In the age of mass production, this caused shipping and trade problems in that shipping systems were unable to transport huge volumes of finished automobiles (in Henry Ford's case) without causing damage, and also government policies imposed trade barriers on finished units.^[1]

History

Mass production was popularized in the 1910s and 1920s ^[2] by Henry Ford Henry Ford was the American founder of the Ford Motor Company and father of modern assembly lines used in mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. He was a prolific inventor and was awarded 161 U.S. patents. As owner of the Ford Motor Company, he became one of the richest and's Ford Motor Company The Ford Motor Company is an American multinational corporation based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury brands, Ford also owns Volvo Cars in Sweden, and a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in the UK. Ford', which introduced electric motors to the then-well-known technique of chain or sequential production and, in the process, began a new era often called the "second industrial revolution." Ford's contribution to mass production was synthetic in nature, collating and improving upon existing methods of sequential production and applying electric power to them, resulting in extremely-high-throughput, continuous-flow mass production, making the Model T affordable and, as such, an instant hit.

Although the Ford Motor Company brought mass production to new heights, it was a synthesizer and extrapolator of ideas rather than being the first creator of mass production. Ships had been mass-produced using pre-manufactured parts The American system of manufacturing involves semi-skilled labor using machine tools and templates to make standardized, identical, interchangeable parts, manufactured to a tolerance. The system is also known as the armory practice because of the history of its development by the United States Department of War in the Springfield and Harpers Ferry and assembly lines An assembly line is a manufacturing process in which parts are added to a product in a sequential manner using optimally planned logistics to create a finished product much faster than with handcrafting-type methods. The assembly line developed by Ford Motor Company between 1908 and 1915 made assembly lines famous in the following decade through in Venice Venice (Italian: Venezia [veˈnɛttsia] , Venetian: Venesia) is a city in northern Italy known both for tourism and for industry, and is the capital of the region Veneto, with a population of 271,367 (census estimate 1 January 2004). Together with Padua, the city is included in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area (population 1,600,000). The name is several hundred years earlier. The Venice Arsenal The Venetian Arsenal was a "shipyard", a number of state owned shipyards and armories and naval depot of munitions and storage facilities clustered together and located in Venice, northern Italy. It was the largest industrial complex in Europe prior to the Industrial Revolution, spanning an area of about 45 ha (110 acres) or fifteen apparently produced nearly one ship every day, in what was effectively the world's first factory A factory or manufacturing plant is an industrial building where laborers manufacture goods or supervise machines processing one product into another. Most modern factories have large warehouses or warehouse-like facilities that contain heavy equipment used for assembly line production. Typically, factories gather and concentrate resources: which, at its height, employed 16,000 people.

Mass production in the publishing industry has been commonplace since Johannes Gutenberg Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg was a German goldsmith and printer who introduced modern book printing. His invention of mechanical movable type printing started the Printing Revolution and is widely regarded the most important event of the modern period. It played a key role in the development of the Renaissance, Reformation and the's Bible The Gutenberg Bible was the first major book printed with a movable type printing press, marking the start of the "Gutenberg Revolution" and the age of the printed book. Widely hailed for its high aesthetic and artistic qualities, the book has iconic status in the West. It is an edition of the Vulgate, printed by Johannes Gutenberg, in was published using a printing press A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium , thereby transferring the ink. Typically used for texts, the invention and spread of the printing press are widely regarded as the most influential event in the second millennium AD, revolutionizing the way people conceive and describe in the mid-1400s.

During the Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, and transport had a profound effect on the socioeconomic and cultural conditions starting in the United Kingdom, then subsequently spreading throughout Europe, North America, and eventually the world. The onset of the simple mass production techniques were used at the Portsmouth Block Mills The Portsmouth Block Mills form part of the Portsmouth Dockyard at Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, and were built during the Napoleonic Wars to supply the British Royal Navy with pulley blocks. They started the age of mass-production using all-metal machine tools and are regarded as one of the seminal buildings of the British Industrial Revolution to manufacture ships' pulley blocks for the Royal Navy The Royal Navy of the United Kingdom is the oldest of HM Armed Forces . From the beginning of the 18th century until well into the 20th century it was the most powerful navy in the world, playing a key part in establishing the British Empire as the dominant world power from 1815 until the early 1940s. In World War II the Royal Navy operated almost during the Napoleonic Wars The Napoleonic Wars were a series of conflicts declared against Napoleon's French Empire and changing sets of European allies by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionized European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to the. These were also used in the manufacture of clocks and watches, and in the manufacture of small arms.

During the American Civil War Union blockade – Eastern – Western – Lower Seaboard – Trans-Mississippi – Pacific Coast the Springfield Armory The Springfield Armory was the primary center for the manufacture of U.S. military small arms and the site of many important technological advances in gun manufacture. Many different models produced at the armory from 1794 to 1968 were referred to as "Springfield rifles". The other major gun manufacturing center was the Harpers Ferry started to mass produce guns, using interchangeable parts Interchangeable parts are parts that are for practical purposes identical. They are made to specifications that ensure that they are so nearly identical that they will fit into any device of the same type. One such part can freely replace another, without any custom fitting . This interchangeability allows easy assembly of new devices, and easier on a large scale. The interchangeable part in manufacturing gun was strongly advocated by Eli Whitney. For this reason, the term Armory practice The American system of manufacturing involves semi-skilled labor using machine tools and templates to make standardized, identical, interchangeable parts, manufactured to a tolerance. The system is also known as the armory practice because of the history of its development by the United States Department of War in the Springfield and Harpers Ferry is occasionally used to refer to mass production. Soon after the war the American System of Watch Manufacturing In the mid 19th century Aaron Lufkin Dennison became inspired by the manufacturing techniques of the United States Armory at Springfield, Mass. The "armory practice" was mainly based on a strict system of organization, the extensive use of the machine shop and a control system based on gauges. Aaron Dennison proposed to produce watches showed that these techniques could be successfully applied even when very high precision was required. Later, in the 1890s, dollar watches The sale of such watches began in 1892 by the watchmakers Ingersoll, Waterbury, and New Haven. Later, Western Clock in 1899 and the E. Ingraham Company also began manufacturing them. Dollar watches were practical, mass-produced timepieces intended to be as inexpensive as possible. Trademarks of dollar watches were their simple, rugged design, traded off lower precision for much lower manufacturing costs.

Taking a look back at the history of American manufacturing, the key features of mass production were the perfect interchangeability of parts in the goods produced, long production runs and large quantity of outputs that were homogeneous. These key features were developed out of the earlier non-mechanized factory system known as the American system.

While the preceding American system of manufacturing The American system of manufacturing involves semi-skilled labor using machine tools and templates to make standardized, identical, interchangeable parts, manufactured to a tolerance. The system is also known as the armory practice because of the history of its development by the United States Department of War in the Springfield and Harpers Ferry relied on steam power A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid, mass production factories were electrified A more specific usage of the word refers to the act or process of building the necessary infrastructure to supply electric power to homes and businesses, especially in rural and isolated areas. It also applies to the changeover of a railway from self contained steam locomotives, or in modern times diesel-powered locomotives to electric locomotives and used sophisticated machinery A machine is a device that uses energy to perform some activity. In common usage, the meaning is that of a device having parts that perform or assist in performing any type of work. A simple machine is a device that transforms the direction or magnitude of a force without consuming any energy. The word "machine" is derived from the Latin. Adoption of these techniques coincided with the birth of the second industrial revolution in the US and its emergence as the dominant industrial superpower in the 20th century. Countries that were quick to follow in its wake (e.g. Germany and Japan) enjoyed high rates of growth.

French political thinker and historian Alexis de Tocqueville Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America (appearing in two volumes: 1835 and 1840) and The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856). In both of these works, he explored the effects of the rising equality of social conditions on the individual and the state in identified one of the key reasons mass production was able to succeed so quickly in America, namely that of the homogeneous consumer base. De Tocqueville wrote in his Democracy in America De la démocratie en Amérique is a classic French text by Alexis de Tocqueville on the democratic institution of the United States in the 1830s and its strengths and weaknesses. A literal translation of its title is Of Democracy in America, but the usual translation of the title is simply Democracy in America. It is regarded as a classic account (1835) that "The absence in the United States of those vast accumulations of wealth Wealth is the abundance of valuable resources or material possessions or the control of such assets. The word wealth is derived from the old English wela, which is from an Indo-European word stem. An individual, community, region or country that possesses an abundance of such possessions or resources is known as wealthy which favor the expenditures of large sums on articles of mere luxury... impact to the productions of American industry a character distinct from that of other countries' industries. [Production is geared toward] articles suited to the wants of the whole people".

See also

• Batch production Batch production is the manufacturing technique of creating a component at a workstation before moving to the next step in production. Batch production is common in bakeries and in the manufacture of sports shoes, pharmaceutical ingredients , inks, paints and adhesives. In the manufacture of inks and paints, a technique called a colour-run is used
• Craft production Craft production is the process of manufacturing by hand with or without the aid of tools. The term Craft production refers to a manufacturing technique applied in the hobbies of Handicraft but was also the common method of manufacture in the pre-industrialized world. For example, the production of pottery uses methods of craft production
• Job production Fabrication shops and machine shops whose work is primarily of the job production type are often called job shops. The associated people or corporations are sometimes called jobbers
• Instant manufacturing Instant manufacturing, also called direct manufacturing or on-demand manufacturing, is an evolving concept in manufacturing technology. The idea is to obtain the advantages of conventional mass production while bypassing its disadvantages (mainly the capital intensity and lead time associated with toolroom work). Another way to understand the
• Just-in-time Just-in-time is an inventory strategy that strives to improve a business's return on investment by reducing in-process inventory and associated carrying costs. To meet JIT objectives, the process relies on signals or Kanban (看板, Kanban?) between different points in the process, which tell production when to make the next part. Kanban are
• Lean manufacturing Lean manufacturing or lean productions, which is often known simply as "Lean", is a production practice that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination. Working from the perspective of the customer who consumes a product or
• Industrial engineering Industrial Engineering is a branch of engineering dealing with optimizing complex processes or systems. It is concerned with the development, improvement, implementation and evaluation of integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information, equipment, energy, materials and/or processes. It also deals with designing new product prototypes
• Operations management Operations management is an area of business concerned with the production of goods and services, and involves the responsibility of ensuring that business operations are efficient in terms of using as little resource as needed, and effective in terms of meeting customer requirements. It is concerned with managing the process that converts inputs
• Manufacturing Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to make things for use or sale. Also it can be used for selling things. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale. Such
• Mass market The mass market is the group of consumers who occupy the overwhelming mass of a bell curve for common household products, i.e. they could be tagged as being "average". Yet, this group consists of such a wide variety of people, their desires towards a certain product may be totally different from each other. Often competition to supply
• Outline of industrial organization
• Pilot plant A pilot plant is a small chemical processing system which is operated to generate information about the behavior of the system for use in design of larger facilities
• Production, costs, and pricing In microeconomics, industrial organization is the field which describes the behavior of firms in the marketplace with regard to production, pricing, employment and other decisions. Topics in this field range from classical issues such as opportunity cost to neoclassical concepts such as factors of production
• Fast-moving consumer goods
• Ford Model T

References

1. ^ Womack, Jones, Roos; The Machine That Changed The World, Rawson & Associates, New York. Published by Simon & Schuster, 1990.
2. ^ Roaring Twenties - The Economy of the 1920s, http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/roaring-twenties/economy-of-the-1920s.html

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