Remember the classic illustration about human evolution in elementary school? A silhouette of an ape on all fours gradually transitions to a modern human walking upright.
It’s tempting to think of an assembly line evolving in the same way, beginning with manual production, transitioning to a mix of manual and automated operations, and ending as a fully automatic system requiring little human intervention. In some cases, assembly lines actually do evolve that way. In most cases, though, decisions about how much, if any, automation to employ on a line is a more complex. Where a new assembly line should fit on the spectrum between fully manual on one end and fully automatic on the other depends on myriad factors, such as production volume and variety, product complexity, the number and types of processes needed to assemble the product, the level of in-house expertise, and, of course, cost.