Definition of "assembly line" []

• An arrangement of workers, machines, and equipment in which the product being assembled passes consecutively from operation to operation until completed. Also called production line. (noun)
• A process in which finished products are turned out in a mechanically efficient, though impersonal, manner: a university that functions as a sports assembly line. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Indeed, it was not until the financial crisis of 1980, sixty-seven years after the introduction of the powered assembly line at Highland Park, that Rover formerly British Leyland, the successor to the merged Austin and Morris companies, finally adopted standard hourly rates and explicitly set out to match the productivity of the Americans."
• "The war interrupted production, and a hand-powered assembly line was not in place until 1919."
• "He meant by this term that he had not only perfected the continuous-flow final assembly line but had also arranged in a tight process sequence the many types of metalworking machines needed to fabricate the components going into the Model T."