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Industrial Engineering & Manufacturing vocabulary · Shop Floor and Maintenance

Production line

Meaning in industrial engineering & manufacturing, with examples

nounCore term

In industrial engineering & manufacturing, production line means: A set of machines and workstations arranged in order, where a product moves from one step to the next until it is finished.

In Turkish: üretim hattı, hat

How it is used

One of the most common words in any factory. Lines are usually numbered or named (Line 2, the packaging line), and people talk about starting, stopping, running and balancing a line. In daily speech it is often shortened to 'the line'.

Example sentences

  1. Production line 3 was down for two hours this morning because of a conveyor fault.

  2. We are adding a second production line to meet the new customer's volumes.

Common collocations

  • run a production line
  • stop the production line
  • production line layout
  • set up a new production line
  • assembly lineA production line where parts are added to a product step by step, with each worker or robot doing one fixed task, as in car and appliance plants.
  • workstationOne place on a line or in a work area where a worker or machine carries out a set group of tasks, with the tools and parts needed for them.
  • line balancingDividing the tasks on a production line among the workstations so that each station has about the same amount of work and none is over takt time.
  • throughputThe number of good units a process, line or plant actually produces in a period of time, such as parts per hour.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Shop Floor and Maintenance

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