assembly line

American  

noun

assembly lines plural

1. an arrangement of machines, tools, and workers in which a product is assembled by having each perform a specific, successive operation on an incomplete unit as it passes by in a series of stages organized in a direct line.

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assembly line British  

noun

1. a sequence of machines, tools, operations, workers, etc, in a factory, arranged so that at each stage a further process is carried out

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assembly line Cultural  

1. A line of factory workers and equipment along which a product being assembled passes consecutively from operation to operation until completed.

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Assembly lines are found in many industries but are particularly associated with automobile manufacturing.

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• assembly lines
  plural

Etymology

Origin of assembly line

An Americanism dating back to 1910–15

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

assembly line

A robot assembly line packs nitrocellulose with the texture of toothpaste into cylinders shaped like large toilet-paper rolls.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 20, 2026

The company plans to build a second assembly line for the Tacoma at the San Antonio plant where it currently assembles larger pickups and SUVs, adding 2,000 jobs, it said.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 6, 2026

The cost of robots has fallen while it remains expensive to redesign the assembly line.

From BBC ● May 28, 2026

Robots can literally walk off the assembly line at the end of a shift after doing jobs that humans once did.

From Barron's ● May 18, 2026

Several decades later, borrowing from this technology, Henry Ford credited the meatpackers for the idea that led to the invention of the automobile assembly line.

From "A Few Red Drops: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919" by Claire Hartfield

Related Words

• production line