Production line

A production line is a set of sequential operations established in a factory where components are assembled to make a finished article or where materials are put through a refining process to produce an end-product that is suitable for onward consumption.

Typically, raw materials such as metal ores or agricultural products such as foodstuffs or textile source plants like cotton and flax require a sequence of treatments to render them useful.

In earlier centuries, with raw materials, power and people often being in different locations, production was distributed across a number of sites.

The concentration of numbers of people in manufactories, and later the factory as exemplified by the cotton mills of Richard Arkwright, started the move towards co-locating individual processes.

Thus, from the processing of raw materials into useful goods, the next step was the concept of the assembly line, as introduced by Eli Whitney.