Emerging trends in assembly

In early studies of assembly by Walker and Guest (1952) after World War II, the focus was on manual assembly work in the context of mass production. An emerging technological trend at that time was the assembly line, and the investigation revealed an increasing worker dissatisfaction with machine-paced work. It was predicted that the approach of mass production would prevail and even be ‘exported’ from the US to the rest of the industrial world. The major conclusion was that it would be necessary in the future to develop human-oriented systems and work methods.