America's Assembly Line
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
From the Model T to today's "lean manufacturing": the assembly line as crucial, yet controversial, agent of social and economic transformation.
The mechanized assembly line was invented in 1913 and has been in continuous operation ever since. It is the most familiar form of mass production. Both praised as a boon to workers and condemned for exploiting them, it has been celebrated and satirized. (We can still picture Chaplin's little tramp trying to keep up with a factory conveyor belt.) In America's Assembly Line, David Nye examines the industrial innovation that made the United States productive and wealthy in the twentieth century.
The assembly line—developed at the Ford Motor Company in 1913 for the mass production of Model Ts—first created and then served an expanding mass market. It also transformed industrial labor. By 1980, Japan had reinvented the assembly line as a system of “lean manufacturing”; American industry reluctantly adopted the new approach. Nye describes this evolution and the new global landscape of increasingly automated factories, with fewer industrial jobs in America and questionable working conditions in developing countries. A century after Ford's pioneering innovation, the assembly line continues to evolve toward more sustainable manufacturing.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Nye thoroughly examines the backbone of mass production and consumerism in the 20th century and today, detailing the disparate elements that in 1913 synthesized into the assembly line under the roof of Henry Ford's Highland Park, Michigan, automobile plant. Nye, a professor of American History, contextualizes industrial processes before the introduction of assembly line techniques and then traces the methods' effects on production and industry, society, and its citizenry. It is fascinating to see how quickly mass production infiltrated industry and was embraced by all manner of society before being shunned for its soul-deadening monotony, repetition, and exploitation. The book hits a high point when discussing the rise of Japanese industry and its lean production innovations compared to the antiquated American assembly methods. It is thus ironic to observe that the evolution of Japanese mass production was helped considerably by adopting, combining, and improving on existing American manufacturing practices ones then "re-exported" back to the United States in efforts to revive its flagging manufacturing industry. Although clear and concise, the dry subject matter fails to fully engage the reader. Nevertheless, Nye manages to highlight what increasingly appears to be the United States' moment as the industrial leader of the world. 50 b/w photos.
