No longer do workers have to stop and pick through bins and racks of parts next to the assembly line, a process that at times has seemed like sorting the screws in an Ikea chair.

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From the public viewing area, touch-screen computers allowed visitors to explore each process at each assembly line station through animation and live demonstrations.

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But the crucial element may be that, in contracting manufacturing out to Chinese factories, GE lost control over, and input into, the foundation of the manufacturing process, the assembly line.

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As with a faulty assembly line, when defects go unspotted until the end of the process it is usually too late to fix them.

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These include disciplined project management skills that will allow a company to process a resource play as efficiently as if it were an assembly line, repetitively drilling and fracking and completing wells one after another with a rabid eye on cost control.

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He insisted that the machinery on the 165-foot assembly line be configured to move the circuit boards from right to left as they got built, so that the process would look better to visitors who watched from the viewing gallery.

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