ABSTRACT
Mass production is line production for both assembly and machine work, with movement regular and continuous, or as nearly continuous as possible. The three main developments—freight-car building, the stock yards and motor-car building—were in that order the historic origin of mass production. The next step in the development of moving the work to the men, which one can now call mass production, was taken in the Chicago Stock Yards. Ford went straight to what is now usual on mass production assembly lines to-day. The advance Ford made on his machine operations was in some ways even more remarkable than the improvements in assembly. Line or continuous feed operations were now in use on machine work on much the same basis as on assembly work. Machine tools were slightly higher in cost per unit of output, but their extra cost was cancelled out by other capital savings.
