Similarly they have been winding down in steel, shipbuilding, car assembly, television sets, and, of course, commodity semiconductors.
In 1959 Toyota's Motomachi factory became Japan's first full-scale car assembly plant.
Detroit's car assembly plants are running at just 77% of capacity, a number that is propped up by those rebates and 0% loans.
The 105-acre area, which includes two car assembly plants, a paint shop and offices, accounts for about a quarter of the old site.
Efficiency is way up: It now takes between 12 and 15 minutes to change a die on the passenger car assembly line, down from two hours in 2000.
Moreover, modern car assembly relies heavily on pre-assembly of parts such as entire dash boards with the stereo, the instrument panel and the steering column already built in.
BBC: NEWS | Business | GM Europe still faces major challenges
Stanley O'Neal, whose career started on a car assembly line and whose grandfather was born a slave, was named president and putative successor to David Komansky, the investment bank's long-serving chairman and chief executive.
Merrill Lynch estimates that in North America as many as 5 of GM's 12 car assembly plants and 13 of its 19 truck assembly plants would need to close, resulting in 60, 000 white- and blue-collar job cuts.
After one has made every last power plant, jet engine, assembly line and car as efficient as they can possibly be given today's technology, one either hopes for an energy-boosting technological miracle or else starts restructuring the economy.
Henry Ford's automated car-assembly line spawned a galaxy of parts factories filled with workers.
The upside, though, is tantalizing: If it works as it should, modular assembly, VW says, will save at least 20% a year in car costs and shorten assembly times by 30%.
Another Toyota innovation is within reach of the assembly line: stacks of car parts in plastic bins, neatly sorted in the sequence in which they'll be needed for the mix of cars coming down the assembly line.
It has made space at the plant by outsourcing the assembly of many parts of the car to others.
Once you consider car parts as well as assembly lines, the rush east becomes a stampede.
The car is then scheduled for assembly, based on the earliest date that parts can be shipped.
Now a supply chain of myriad links runs all around the world, connecting designers, chipmakers, car-parts firms and assembly lines.
Kuala Lumpur im-poses duties of 42% to 70% on car components and kits for assembly in Malaysia, but Proton pays just 13%.
The Palio assembly line uses rotating cradles that tilt the car body to convenient angles improving both quality and job satisfaction.
This assembly line, however, consists of one car, and the worker is an Ohio State University graduate student draped in wires, sensors and electrodes that record every move.
The government's response was not to raise import duties again, but to pass a measure intended to persuade foreign makers to revive the Russian car industry by setting up local assembly plants.
At the beginning of his mass-production assembly line, Ford was producing one complete, fully functional car every 90 minutes.
FORBES: A Look Ahead: Trends Affecting Enterprise Mobility in 2013
Investing in robots can be worthwhile for mass manufacturers like carmakers, who remain the biggest users of such machines, but even in highly automated car factories people still do most of the final assembly.
Pre-made kits for the car are shipped to India, Columbia and Ecuador for assembly.
German car maker Volkswagen, for example, has operated an assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee since 2011, producing Passat sedans.
FORBES: The UAW, Having Stripped Detroit Bare, Looks To The South
Chery's vehicle assembly line runs at a rather slow pace, churning out one car every 120 seconds compared with half that at the best North American plants.
For example: The new Cayman has a 2.4-inch longer wheelbase than before, shorter overhangs, larger wheels, a larger greenhouse (the base of the windshield has been pulled forward and the hatch-line lands farther back), and a higher equipment level, and yet this visually muscled-up Cayman still manages to be about 60 pounds lighter than the car it replaces, thanks to aluminum-intensive structures and assembly shared with the 911 Carrera.
WSJ: 2014 Porsche Cayman S Review: 911's Little Brother Grows Up | Rumble Seat by Dan Neil
Dundee Sheriff Court heard that prosecutors allege he rigged up a "man-made assembly in his house suspended from the ceiling by thin ropes, with a car battery and cans of petrol nearby".
Members of the Assembly Commission then took questions regarding issues such as carbon emissions from Parliament Buildings and car parking at Stormont.
TBM's founder, Anand Sharma, is convinced that the car industry will gradually move to a pattern where most of a car will be made in modules that are simply snapped together in small assembly lines close to the consumer, where details can be adapted to local tastes.
应用推荐