The assembly line

The assembly line is first and foremost an image, one that dominated the industrial workplace for most of the 20thcentury. Since Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, it has tended to symbolise contemporary work, particularly its fragmentation, repetition, loss of meaning and even the alienation of those who perform it. These negative aspects of work itself have gradually supplanted positive and rather employer-oriented representations of this system, such as the complementarity of tasks, the rigour of the pace and, ultimately, productive power.