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assembly line

assembly line

39 3.2
A factory system where a product moves past workers who add parts
  • noun
  • /əˈsɛm.bli laɪn/
  • Specialized
translation icon : línea de montaje
  • As word of Henry Ford's new automobile assembly line spread, Smith contemplated automating his frame manufacturing process.
  • assembly line workers
  • assembly line manufacturing
  • assembly line production

One thing to point out to these assembly lines are huge.

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Examples

  • Two office towers, each three stories high, flank the assembly line and engineering area.

    Academic text (2005)
  • Traditional manufacturing machines and assembly lines efficiently produced a single product.

    Academic text (2015)
  • His father worked the night shift on the assembly line of a factory.

    Fiction book (1995)
  • My mother worked on farms, then on a car assembly line, working six days double shifts.

  • Of course, the real invention wasn't the car, it was the assembly line that built it.

  • Twenty-foot-wide doors in the engineering area open onto the assembly line, which is 1,000 feet long.

    Academic text (2005)
  • Automobile manufacturers modified their assembly-line methods to suit the greater precision and larger scale of building aircraft.

    Academic text (2005)
  • Ford opened his first moving assembly line in 1913, in Highland Park, Mich.

    Academic text (2005)
  • Henry Ford didn't invent the assembly line, but boy, did he refine it.

  • At the factory, workers efficiently moved parts along the assembly line to create the final product.

Synonyms

line
vsassembly line
575 3.0

A company or service that moves people and goods

refers specifically to progressive building at workstations, not the broader business sense
production line
vsassembly line
  • Specialized
13 3.0

A series of machines and workers in a factory that make a product step by step

is about progressive building as the product moves between specific workstations
flowline
vsassembly line
  • Specialized
5.6

A factory system where products move without stopping between machines for assembly

focuses on stepwise building at separate stations rather than continuous machine flow

How Automated

plant
981 4.8
assembly line
  • Specialized
39 3.2
workstation
15 3.5
workbench
18 3.2

Surface Forms

assembly line singular

Morphology

assembly + line

The meaning is directly compositional: 'assembly' (joining parts) + 'line' (a sequence or row) clearly yields a sequence where items are assembled, so a B1 learner who knows both words can infer the factory process. Many languages use a similar literal construction (e.g., Spanish 'línea de montaje'), and the noun+noun compound follows a common, transparent pattern.

Etymology

The noun assembly line comes from factories where a product moved along a line of workers and each person added one part to the assembly. Because the product was built step by step as it moved, the phrase means 'a system to make things quickly'.