Revolutionary Innovations in Automobile Assembly Plants
More than hundred years ago, the founder of Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford alongside
his team at Highland Park assembly plant, launched world's first moving assembly line. That
eventually went ahead and simplified the assembly of the Ford Model T's 3000 parts by
breaking it into a total of 84 different steps performed by various groups of workers while a
rope pulled the vehicle chassis down the line. The all new process of car manufacturing
revolutionized production and the car assembly time dropped from massive 12 hours to
mere 90 minutes.
After reducing the time, money, and the needed manpower to build a car, Henry Ford was
quite successful to reduce the price of Model T from $850 to less than $300, which brought
the Model T within reach of common Americans. Eventually, Ford went further ahead and
built a Model T every 24 seconds, and by 1927, it sold more than 15 million Model Ts
worldwide, accounting half of the automobile sold.
Cut to recent days, now most of the automobile companies are heavily investing in robotic
innovations, to improve its vehicle quality and production efficiencies. Now organizations
use the various new system, which includes robotic vision in order to create a digital model
of each car in the final assembly line to analyze the paint quality and imperfections in the
surface by comparing with a perfect model.
The automated robotic systems can perform most of the automated tasks on vehicle
frames, chassis, underbodies, fenders, as well as interior parts during the production of the
vehicle. Previously, changing a line to work on the different model was quite tedious and
lengthy process, however, nowadays one can easily reset a robot and reprogram it
according to the preferences, which eventually increases the versatility of the production
line without hampering the production. Back in the late 1990s another American
manufacturer Chrysler started robotic automation process in their factories, and eventually