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56-544: Permanente Metals Corporation (PMC) is best known for having managed the Richmond Shipyards in Richmond, California , owned by one of industrialist Henry J. Kaiser's many corporations, and also engaged in related corporate activities. These four of the seven west coast Kaiser Shipyards were known for their construction of Liberty ships and later Victory ships . The company was formed on 9 December 1940 as

112-576: A production line . Ships moved down a canal and were fitted by the various shops they passed. At the peak of its efficiency in the early 16th century, the Arsenal employed some 16,000 people who could apparently produce nearly one ship each day and could fit out, arm, and provision a newly built galley with standardized parts on an assembly-line basis. Although the Arsenal lasted until the early Industrial Revolution, production line methods did not become common even then. The Industrial Revolution led to

168-532: A bottleneck. Only japan black would dry fast enough, forcing the company to drop the variety of colours available before 1914, until fast-drying Duco lacquer was developed in 1926. The assembly line technique was an integral part of the diffusion of the automobile into American society. Decreased costs of production allowed the cost of the Model T to fall within the budget of the American middle class. In 1908,

224-482: A chance for people to externalize facets of their personalities. Marxists argue that performing repetitive, specialized tasks causes a feeling of disconnection between what a worker does all day, who they really are, and what they would ideally be able to contribute to society. Furthermore, Marx views these specialised jobs as insecure, since the worker is expendable as soon as costs rise and technology can replace more expensive human labour. Since workers have to stand in

280-570: A gradual, logical development of industrial engineering : What was worked out at Ford was the practice of moving the work from one worker to another until it became a complete unit, then arranging the flow of these units at the right time and the right place to a moving final assembly line from which came a finished product. Regardless of earlier uses of some of these principles, the direct line of succession of mass production and its intensification into automation stems directly from what we worked out at Ford Motor Company between 1908 and 1913. Henry Ford

336-474: A joint project of Kaiser Permanente Metals Corporation and Todd Shipyards Corporation. Construction of its first Liberty Ship at the site started in September 1941. Permanente Metals was a subcontractor building many of the pre-fabricated parts of the ships. Kaiser purchased Todd's interest in the yard in 1942 and renamed it Kaiser Richmond No. 2 Yard. The yard started by working 6 keels at a time and at its peak

392-544: A part of a competition among shipyards. By 1944, the yard routinely needed only a bit more than two weeks to assemble a Liberty ship. By the end of the war the Richmond Shipyards had built $ 1.8 billion worth of ships. Kaiser and his workers applied mass assembly line techniques to building the ships. This production line technique, bringing pre-made parts together, moving them into place with huge cranes and having them welded together by "Rosies" (actually "Wendy

448-462: A proliferation of manufacturing and invention. Many industries, notably textiles , firearms , clocks and watches , horse-drawn vehicles , railway locomotives , sewing machines , and bicycles , saw expeditious improvement in materials handling, machining, and assembly during the 19th century, although modern concepts such as industrial engineering and logistics had not yet been named. The automatic flour mill built by Oliver Evans in 1785

504-455: A sequence of workstations. Each task requires a given task duration for completion. The assignment of tasks to stations is typically limited by two constraints: (1) a precedence graph which indicates what other tasks need to be completed before a particular task can be initiated (e.g. not putting in a screw before drilling the hole) and (2) a cycle time which restricts the sum of task processing times which can be completed at each workstation before

560-431: A team consisting primarily of Peter E. Martin , the factory superintendent; Charles E. Sorensen , Martin's assistant; Clarence W. Avery ; C. Harold Wills , draftsman and toolmaker; Charles Ebender ; and József Galamb . Some of the groundwork for such development had recently been laid by the intelligent layout of machine tool placement that Walter Flanders had been doing at Ford up to 1908. The moving assembly line

616-406: A time. In traditional production, only one car would be assembled at a time. If engine installation takes 20 minutes, hood installation takes five minutes, and wheels installation takes 10 minutes, then a car can be produced every 35 minutes. In an assembly line, car assembly is split between several stations, all working simultaneously. When a station is finished with a car, it passes it on to

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672-517: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Richmond Shipyards The four Richmond Shipyards , in the city of Richmond, California , United States , were run by Permanente Metals and part of the Kaiser Shipyards . In World War II , Richmond built more ships than any other shipyard , turning out as many as three ships in a single day. The shipyards are part of the Rosie

728-489: Is believed to be one of the first industrial assembly lines (or disassembly lines) to be utilized in the United States starting in 1867. Workers would stand at fixed stations and a pulley system would bring the meat to each worker and they would complete one task. Henry Ford and others have written about the influence of this slaughterhouse practice on the later developments at Ford Motor Company. According to Domm,

784-629: Is docked nearby Kaiser Richmond No. 3 Yard. For World War 2 Kaiser opened four shipyards along the northeast shoreline of San Francisco Bay , each using prefabricated parts to build ships. Prefabricated subcontractors included: Graham Ship Repair Company, Herrick Iron Works, Independent Iron Works , Berkeley's Trailer Company of America, Steel Tank & Pipe Company, California Steel Products Corporation, Pacific Coast Engineering in Alameda and Clyde W. Wood in Stockton. Kaiser Richmond No. 1 Yard

840-428: Is generally regarded as the father of mass production. He was not. He was the sponsor of it. As a result of these developments in method, Ford's cars came off the line in three-minute intervals or six feet per minute. This was much faster than previous methods, increasing production by eight to one (requiring 12.5 man-hours before, 1 hour 33 minutes after), while using less manpower. It was so successful, paint became

896-557: Is the SS Red Oak Victory Cargo ship a Museum ship. Kaiser Richmond No. 3 Yard thus became the U.S. National Register of Historic Place and California Historical Landmark. At GPS 37°54′19″N 122°21′55″W  /  37.9054°N 122.3653°W  / 37.9054; -122.3653 . Built at Kaiser Richmond No. 3 Yard: Notable ships: USS  General M. L. Hersey  (AP-148) and USS  General Omar Bundy  (AP-152) . Kaiser Richmond No. 4 Yard

952-486: The National Park Service . See also, similar role:- Empire ship , Fort ship , Park ship , Ocean ship . Assembly line Assembly lines are common methods of assembling complex items such as automobiles and other transportation equipment, household appliances and electronic goods . Workers in charge of the works of assembly line are called assemblers . Assembly lines are designed for

1008-829: The Todd California Shipbuilding Corporation . The name was changed to Permanente Metals Corp. on 8 November 1941. In February 1942 the Todd Corporation acquired Kaiser interests in the Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation and Kaiser acquired Todd's interests in Permanente Metals. The seven way shipyard in Richmond that was built to fulfill a contract for 30 Ocean ships was complete by August 1941 and Permanente Metals completed

1064-498: The Type C4-class ship , General G. O. Squier-class transport ships. These ships had a 12,420 GRT with a length of 523 feet (159 m). While the yard closed at the end of the war in 1946 the shipyard was not taken apart. The shipyard is still intact and there have been unsuccessful attempts to reopen the yard. Kaiser Richmond No. 3 Yard is at 1040 Canal Boulevard, Richmond at Point Potrero. At 1337 Canal Boulevard Berth 5, Richmond

1120-807: The automotive industry , its success was dominating, and quickly spread worldwide. Ford France and Ford Britain in 1911, Ford Denmark 1923, Ford Germany and Ford Japan 1925; in 1919, Vulcan (Southport, Lancashire) was the first native European manufacturer to adopt it. Soon, companies had to have assembly lines, or risk going broke by not being able to compete; by 1930, 250 companies which did not had disappeared. The massive demand for military hardware in World War II prompted assembly-line techniques in shipbuilding and aircraft production. Thousands of Liberty ships were built making extensive use of prefabrication, enabling ship assembly to be completed in weeks or even days. After having produced fewer than 3,000 planes for

1176-421: The social alienation and boredom that many workers feel because of the repetition of doing the same specialized task all day long. Karl Marx expressed in his theory of alienation the belief that, in order to achieve job satisfaction, workers need to see themselves in the objects they have created, that products should be "mirrors in which workers see their reflected essential nature". Marx viewed labour as

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1232-449: The Model T price. These goals appear altruistic; however, it has been argued that they were implemented by Ford in order to reduce high employee turnover: when the assembly line was introduced in 1913, it was discovered that "every time the company wanted to add 100 men to its factory personnel, it was necessary to hire 963" in order to counteract the natural distaste the assembly line seems to have inspired. Sociological work has explored

1288-946: The Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park , whose Rosie the Riveter memorial honors the shipyard workers. Shipyard #3 is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a California Historical Landmark # 1032. Henry J. Kaiser had been building cargo ships for the U.S. Maritime Commission in the late 1930s. When he received orders for ships from the British government , already at war with Nazi Germany , Kaiser established his first Richmond shipyard in December 1940. The shipyard legacy continues by virtue of its innovative medical care, which

1344-575: The United States Military in 1939, American aircraft manufacturers built over 300,000 planes in World War II. Vultee pioneered the use of the powered assembly line for aircraft manufacturing. Other companies quickly followed. As William S. Knudsen (having worked at Ford, GM and the National Defense Advisory Commission) observed, "We won because we smothered the enemy in an avalanche of production,

1400-460: The Welders" here in the shipyards), allowed unskilled laborers to do repetitive jobs requiring relatively little training to accomplish. This sped up construction, allowed more workers to be mobilized, and opened jobs to women and minorities. In the war, thousands of men and women worked in this area in hazardous jobs. Actively recruited by Kaiser, they came from all over the United States to swell

1456-501: The building it would stop at various stages where new parts would be added. From the upper level, where other parts were made, the lighter parts would be lowered over a balcony and then fixed onto the machine on the ground level. When the machine reached the end of the shop, it would be completed. During the early 19th century, the development of machine tools such as the screw-cutting lathe , metal planer , and milling machine , and of toolpath control via jigs and fixtures , provided

1512-714: The contract for the ships. The company was originally a major producer of magnesium during World War II and derives its name from the Permanente Creek in Santa Clara County, California where mining operations commenced in the early 1930s. To make use of its major product, powdered magnesium, PMC also developed and supplied an incendiary bomb mixture of magnesium powder, asphalt, gasoline and others components (known as "goop", with similar characteristics to napalm ); 17,000 short tons of goop-filled bombs were used in World War II (approximately eight percent of

1568-400: The engine has been installed on the second car, the second car moves to the hood assembly. At the same time, the third car moves to the engine assembly. When the third car's engine has been mounted, it then can be moved to the hood station; meanwhile, subsequent cars (if any) can be moved to the engine installation station. Assuming no loss of time when moving a car from one station to another,

1624-737: The first keel laid on May 15, 1942. Needing faster cargo ships the next series of ships built were Victory ships , with the first keel laid on January 17, 1944. After the war, in 1946, the yard closed. Kaiser Richmond No. 1 Yard was at 700 Wright Ave, Richmond on the Parr Canal. The site now has general docks for construction supplies. Located at GPS 37°55′15″N 122°21′47″W  /  37.920887°N 122.362920°W  / 37.920887; -122.362920 . Built at Kaiser Richmond No. 1 Yard: Notable ships: Ocean Victory , Ocean Vigour , Chief Ouray , Logan Victory and Northeastern Victory . Kaiser Richmond No. 2 Yard started as

1680-556: The help of Henry Maudslay and others, designed 22 types of machine tools to make the parts for the rigging blocks used by the Royal Navy . This factory was so successful that it remained in use until the 1960s, with the workshop still visible at HM Dockyard in Portsmouth , and still containing some of the original machinery. One of the earliest examples of an almost modern factory layout, designed for easy material handling,

1736-479: The idea forth to Henry Ford , but Pa Klann's slaughterhouse revelation is well documented in the archives at the Henry Ford Museum and elsewhere, making him an important contributor to the modern automated assembly line concept. Ford was appreciative, having visited the highly automated 40-acre Sears mail order handling facility around 1906. At Ford, the process was an evolution by trial and error of

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1792-623: The implementation of mass production of an automobile via an assembly line may be credited to Ransom Olds , who used it to build the first mass-produced automobile, the Oldsmobile Curved Dash . Olds patented the assembly line concept, which he put to work in his Olds Motor Vehicle Company factory in 1901. At Ford Motor Company , the assembly line was introduced by William "Pa" Klann upon his return from visiting Swift & Company's slaughterhouse in Chicago and viewing what

1848-553: The individual parts. They would then assemble them into the final product, making cut-and-try changes in the parts until they fit and could work together ( craft production ). Division of labor was practiced by Ancient Greeks , Chinese and other ancient civilizations. In Ancient Greece it was discussed by Plato and Xenophon . Adam Smith discussed the division of labour in the manufacture of pins at length in his book The Wealth of Nations (published in 1776). The Venetian Arsenal , dating to about 1104, operated similar to

1904-407: The like of which he had never seen, nor dreamed possible." In his 1922 autobiography, Henry Ford mentions several benefits of the assembly line including: The gains in productivity allowed Ford to increase worker pay from $ 1.50 per day to $ 5.00 per day once employees reached three years of service on the assembly line. Ford continued on to reduce the hourly work week while continuously lowering

1960-531: The longest stage on the assembly line determines the throughput (20 minutes for the engine installation) so a car can be produced every 20 minutes, once the first car taking 35 minutes has been produced. Before the Industrial Revolution , most manufactured products were made individually by hand. A single craftsman or team of craftsmen would create each part of a product. They would use their skills and tools such as files and knives to create

2016-424: The next. By having three stations, three cars can be operated on at the same time, each at a different stage of assembly. After finishing its work on the first car, the engine installation crew can begin working on the second car. While the engine installation crew works on the second car, the first car can be moved to the hood station and fitted with a hood, then to the wheels station and be fitted with wheels. After

2072-404: The part to the next workman for his own. (3) Use sliding assembling lines by which the parts to be assembled are delivered at convenient distances. Designing assembly lines is a well-established mathematical challenge, referred to as an assembly line balancing problem. In the simple assembly line balancing problem the aim is to assign a set of tasks that need to be performed on the workpiece to

2128-432: The population of Richmond from 20,000 to over 100,000 in three years. For many of them, this was the first time they worked, earned money, and faced the problems of working parents: finding day care and housing. Women and minorities entered the workforce in areas previously denied to them. However, they still faced unequal pay, were shunted off into "auxiliary" unions and still had to deal with prejudice and inequities. In

2184-418: The prerequisites for the modern assembly line by making interchangeable parts a practical reality. Steam-powered conveyor lifts began being used for loading and unloading ships some time in the last quarter of the 19th century. Hounshell (1984) shows a c.  1885 sketch of an electric-powered conveyor moving cans through a filling line in a canning factory. The meatpacking industry of Chicago

2240-422: The price of a Model T was around $ 825, and by 1912 it had decreased to around $ 575. This price reduction is comparable to a reduction from $ 15,000 to $ 10,000 in dollar terms from the year 2000. In 1914, an assembly line worker could buy a Model T with four months' pay. Ford's complex safety procedures—especially assigning each worker to a specific location instead of allowing them to roam about—dramatically reduced

2296-421: The rate of injury . The combination of high wages and high efficiency is called " Fordism ", and was copied by most major industries. The efficiency gains from the assembly line also coincided with the take-off of the United States. The assembly line forced workers to work at a certain pace with very repetitive motions which led to more output per worker while other countries were using less productive methods. In

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2352-521: The sequential organization of workers, tools or machines, and parts. The motion of workers is minimized to the extent possible. All parts or assemblies are handled either by conveyors or motorized vehicles such as forklifts , or gravity , with no manual trucking. Heavy lifting is done by machines such as overhead cranes or forklifts. Each worker typically performs one simple operation unless job rotation strategies are applied. According to Henry Ford : The principles of assembly are these: (1) Place

2408-405: The tools and the men in the sequence of the operation so that each component part shall travel the least possible distance while in the process of finishing. (2) Use work slides or some other form of the carrier so that when a workman completes his operation, he drops the part always in the same place—which place must always be the most convenient place to his hand—and if possible have gravity carry

2464-631: The total tonnage of incendiaries that were dropped during that conflict). Permanente ranked 42nd among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts. After the war Kaiser went into the aluminum business, starting out with war surplus plants in Washington state and Louisiana. In 1949, the company name was changed. Permanente Metals was henceforth the Kaiser Aluminum & Chemicals Corporation . This article about an industrial corporation or company

2520-653: The war, labor strikes and sit-down work stoppages eventually led to better conditions. Many workers commuted from other parts of the Bay Area to the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond on the Shipyard Railway , a temporary wartime railway whose trains used cars of the local Key System and whose line extended from a depot in Emeryville to a loop serving all four shipyards. The SS Red Oak Victory

2576-446: The work-piece is moved to the next station by the conveyor belt. Major planning problems for operating assembly lines include supply chain integration , inventory control and production scheduling . Consider the assembly of a car : assume that certain steps in the assembly line are to install the engine, install the hood, and install the wheels (in that order, with arbitrary interstitial steps); only one of these steps can be done at

2632-431: The world. In 1922, Ford (through his ghostwriter Crowther) said of his 1913 assembly line: I believe that this was the first moving line ever installed. The idea came in a general way from the overhead trolley that the Chicago packers use in dressing beef. Charles E. Sorensen , in his 1956 memoir My Forty Years with Ford , presented a different version of development that was not so much about individual "inventors" as

2688-555: Was a new shipyard built to support the demand for ships for World War 2. Kaiser purchased the contact and the yard to build type Ocean ship from the Todd Shipyards in 1940. Kaiser built yard No. 1 to build the Ocean ships. Yard No. 1 was built on unoccupied land with construction starting in December 1940. In April 1941 the keel for the first British bound Ocean ship was laid. The next series of ships built were Liberty ships, with

2744-591: Was called the beginning of modern bulk material handling by Roe (1916). Evans's mill used a leather belt bucket elevator, screw conveyors , canvas belt conveyors, and other mechanical devices to completely automate the process of making flour. The innovation spread to other mills and breweries. Probably the earliest industrial example of a linear and continuous assembly process is the Portsmouth Block Mills , built between 1801 and 1803. Marc Isambard Brunel (father of Isambard Kingdom Brunel ), with

2800-419: Was derived from Kaiser's earlier California Colorado Aqueduct Project insurance and today called Kaiser Permanente . The four Richmond Kaiser Shipyards built 747 ships in World War II, a rate never equaled. Compared to the average ship built elsewhere, Richmond ships were completed in two-thirds the time and at a quarter of the cost. The Liberty ship Robert E. Peary was assembled in less than five days as

2856-549: Was developed for the Ford Model T and began operation on October 7, 1913, at the Highland Park Ford Plant , and continued to evolve after that, using time and motion study . The assembly line, driven by conveyor belts , reduced production time for a Model T to just 93 minutes by dividing the process into 45 steps. Producing cars quicker than paint of the day could dry, it had an immense influence on

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2912-508: Was initiated at the factory of Richard Garrett & Sons , Leiston Works in Leiston in the English county of Suffolk for the manufacture of portable steam engines . The assembly line area was called ' The Long Shop ' on account of its length and was fully operational by early 1853. The boiler was brought up from the foundry and put at the start of the line, and as it progressed through

2968-922: Was planned to be called Richmond #3A Yard, as just an expansion of Richmond #3. But when opened became its own shipyard with separate management. The yard opened in 1943 and closed at the end of the war in 1945. The yard was at 800 Wharf Street Richmond, on the south side of Richmond Inner Harbor Channel's Santa Fe Channel. The site now is Sugar Dock, a deepwater service port in Point Richmond. At GPS 37°55′13″N 122°22′19″W  /  37.9203°N 122.37186°W  / 37.9203; -122.37186 . Built at Kaiser Richmond No. 4 Yard: Notable ships: USS  LST-480 , USS  Tacoma  (PF-3) , USS  Pasco  (PF-6) , USS  Fentress  (AK-180) , USS  Beltrami and USS  Blount . [REDACTED]  This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of

3024-407: Was referred to as the "disassembly line", where carcasses were butchered as they moved along a conveyor. The efficiency of one person removing the same piece over and over without moving to another station caught his attention. He reported the idea to Peter E. Martin , soon to be head of Ford production, who was doubtful at the time but encouraged him to proceed. Others at Ford have claimed to have put

3080-638: Was the Bridgewater Foundry . The factory grounds were bordered by the Bridgewater Canal and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway . The buildings were arranged in a line with a railway for carrying the work going through the buildings. Cranes were used for lifting the heavy work, which sometimes weighed in the tens of tons. The work passed sequentially through to erection of framework and final assembly. The first flow assembly line

3136-1111: Was working on 12 keels a day. Most ships being built in under 30 days. The yard was built starting in 1941 and closed at the end of the war in 1945, no traces of yard No. 2 remain. The yard was at 1923 Esplanade Drive, Richmond. The site is now the north side of the Inner Harbour Basin , in the Richmond Marina Bay , at Marina Bay Park. At the park is the Rosie the Riveter Memorial. GPS site is 37°54′55″N 122°20′58″W  /  37.915315°N 122.349372°W  / 37.915315; -122.349372 . Built at Kaiser Richmond No. 2 Yard: Notable ships: Timothy Pickering , Stephen Hopkins , Samuel Huntington , Robert T. Lincoln , Hobart Baker , Melville E. Stone , E. A. Bryan , Antoine Saugrain , and Hobbs Victory . Kaiser Richmond No. 3 Yard opened in 1943 and built Kaiser's largest ships,

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