Division of labor
Division of labor is the separation of a work process into a number of tasks, with each task performed by a separate person or group of persons. It is most often applied to systems of mass production and is one of the basic organizing principles of the assembly line. Dividing work into simple tasks eliminates unnecessary motion and limits the handling of different tools and parts. The consequent reduction in production time and the ability to replace craftsmen with lower-paid, unskilled workers result in lower production costs and a less expensive final product. Contrary to popular belief, division of labour does not necessarily lead to a decrease in skills, known as proletarianization, among the working population. The Scottish economist, Adam Smith, saw this as a key to economic progress by providing a cheaper and more efficient means of producing goods.
The French scholar Émile Durkheim first used the phrase, division of labour, in a sociological sense in his discussion of social evolution. Rather than viewing division of labour as a consequence of a desire for material abundance, Durkheim stated that specialization arose from changes in social structure caused by an assumed natural increase in the size and density of population and a corresponding increase in competition for survival. Division of labour functioned to keep societies from breaking apart under these conditions.
The intensive specialization in industrial societies—the refinement and simplification of tasks (especially associated with a machine technology) so that a worker often produces only a small part of a particular commodity—is not usually found in nonindustrialized societies. There is rarely a division of labour within an industry in nonliterate communities, except perhaps for the production of larger goods (such as houses or canoes); in these cases the division is often a temporary one, and each worker is competent to perform other phases of the task. There may be some specialization in types of product (e.g. one worker may produce pottery for religious uses; another, pottery for ordinary uses), but each worker usually performs all steps of the process.
Assembly line
In order to keep up with the increasing demand for those original devices, horseless carriages, Ransom Olds created the assembly line in 1901. The new approach to putting together automobiles enabled him to more than quadruple his factory’s output, from 425 cars in 1901 to 2,500 in 1902.Olds should have become known as "the father of automotive assembly line" although many people think that it was Henry Ford who invented the assembly line. What Ford did do was to improve upon Olds’s idea by installing conveyor belts. That cut the time of manufacturing a Model T from a day and a half to a mere ninety minutes. Henry Ford should been called "the father of automotive mass production".
Mass production
In 1907, Henry Ford announced his goal for the Ford Motor Company: to create "a motor car for the great multitude". At that time, automobiles were expensive machines. Ford's engineers took the first step towards this goal by designing the Model T, a simple, sturdy car offering no factory options. The Model T, first produced in 1908, kept the same design until the last one -number 15,000,000- rolled off the line in 1927. From the start, the Model T was less expensive than most other cars, but it was still not attainable for the "multitude". Ford realized he would need a more efficient way to produce the car in order to lower the price. He and his team looked at other industries and found four principles that would further their goal: interchangeable parts, continuous flow, division of labor, and reducing wasted effort.Using interchangeable parts meant making the individual pieces of the car the same every time. That way would fit any engine and any steering wheel would fit any chassis. The efficiencies to be gained were proven in the assembly of standardized photography equipment pioneered by George Eastman in 1892. This meant improving the machinery and cutting tools used to make the parts. But once the machines were adjusted, a low-skilled laborer could operate them, replacing the skilled craftsperson who formerly made the parts by hand. To improve the flow of the work, it needed to be arranged so that as one task was finished, another began, with minimum time spent in set-up. Ford was inspired by the meat-packing houses of Chicago and a grain mill conveyor belt he had seen. If he brought the work to the workers, they spent less time moving about. Then he divided the labor by breaking the assembly of the Model T into 84 steps. Each worker was trained to do just one of these steps. Ford called in Frederick Winslow Taylor, the creator of "scientific management", to do time and motion studies to determine the exact speed at which the work should proceed and the exact motions workers should use to accomplish their tasks. By reducing wasted effort, Ford put these principles into play gradually over five years. In 1913, they came together in the first moving assembly line ever used for large-scale manufacturing. Ford produced cars at a record-breaking rate. That meant he could lower the price and still make a good profit by selling more cars. Ford's manufacturing principles were adopted by many other industries. The process was so revolutionary that the term "to Fordize" meant to standardize a product and manufacture it by mass means at a price so low that the common man could afford to buy it. Henry Ford went beyond his goal of making cars affordable for all; he changed the habits of a nation, and shaped its character.
References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_labor, http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9046713/division-of-labour, http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-68160/mass-production#68160.toc, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_production, http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9009928/assembly-line, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_line, http://www.essortment.com/all/movingassembly_rfjh.htm
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