How did the assembly line change manufacturing?
Henry Ford's moving assembly line (1913) revolutionized manufacturing by breaking production into simple, repetitive tasks performed in sequence as products moved past stationary workers. It slashed the time to build a Model T from 12 hours to 93 minutes, drastically cutting costs and making consumer goods affordable to ordinary workers — creating modern mass production and consumer culture.
The moving assembly line, perfected by Henry Ford at his Highland Park plant in 1913, was one of the most transformative innovations of the Second Industrial Revolution. It did not merely improve manufacturing efficiency — it created an entirely new model of production and consumption that reshaped the global economy.
Ford did not invent the assembly line concept — elements of sequential production had been used in slaughterhouses and other industries. But he perfected the moving assembly line for complex manufactured goods. The principle was elegant: instead of skilled workers moving around a stationary product, the product moved past stationary workers, each performing a single, simple, repetitive task. The chassis moved along a conveyor while workers added components in sequence — engine, wheels, body, interior — each operation timed and standardized.
The efficiency gains were staggering. Before the assembly line, it took roughly 12 hours to build a Model T. Afterward, it took 93 minutes. The cost of a Model T fell from $850 in 1908 to $260 by 1925 (roughly $4,000 in today's money). By the mid-1920s, half of all cars in the world were Model Ts. Ford's workforce grew to over 100,000 at the River Rouge complex, the largest industrial facility in the world.
Ford also recognized that mass production required mass consumption. In 1914, he introduced the $5 workday — roughly double the prevailing wage — with the explicit goal of enabling his workers to buy the cars they built. This was revolutionary: the idea that workers should be paid enough to be consumers of the products they manufactured. It challenged the prevailing model of keeping wages as low as possible and pointed toward the consumer economy that would define the 20th century.
But the assembly line also had darker dimensions. The work was mind-numbingly repetitive — each worker performed the same task hundreds of times a day, becoming, as critics noted, an extension of the machine rather than a craftsman. Turnover at Ford's plants was initially astronomical — workers hated the tedium. The deskilling of labor reduced workers' bargaining power and made them easily replaceable. Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times (1936) captured the dehumanizing potential of assembly-line work in images that remain iconic.
The assembly line model spread far beyond automobiles. It became the standard for manufacturing everything from appliances to electronics to processed food. Combined with mass marketing and consumer credit, it created the consumer society — a world in which ordinary people could afford goods that had once been luxuries. For better and worse, the assembly line created the modern world of mass production, mass consumption, and the culture built around them.