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.

---

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

---

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.

---

Discover More

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

Toyota said it plans to invest $3.6 billion adding a second assembly line at a new San Antonio facility to produce its Tacoma truck and will create 2,000 jobs.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 9, 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

We created an assembly line to process the manuscript.

From "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela

Related Words

• production line