Automotive manufacturing

Automotive manufacturing is the industrial production of motor vehicles and their components, combining materials processing, component fabrication, and vehicle assembly.

Automotive assembly line: A production system in which vehicles move through a sequence of stations for assembly. It organizes vehicle assembly into repeatable tasks performed along a moving production flow.
Metal stamping: A manufacturing process that cuts or forms sheet metal using presses and dies. Pressed panels provide much of a vehicle body's shape and structure.
Ford Model T: A Ford automobile produced from 1908 to 1927 and associated with early automotive mass production. Its production helped make standardized, high-volume vehicle manufacturing a defining industrial model.
Flexible manufacturing system: A production system that can make different products or variants with limited equipment changeover. Flexibility lets vehicle plants accommodate multiple models and configurations on shared lines.
Industrial robot: A programmable machine that performs manufacturing tasks automatically or under human supervision. Robots transformed welding, painting, and material handling in automotive plants.
Body-in-white: A vehicle body structure after its sheet-metal parts have been joined but before painting and trim. It is the welded structural shell that enters paint and final assembly.
Resistance spot welding: A welding process that joins overlapping metal sheets by passing electric current through them under pressure. Automotive body shops use it to join many sheet-metal panels rapidly.
Fordism: A system of mass production and consumption associated with standardized goods and assembly-line labor. Automotive factories helped establish Fordism as a model of industrial organization.
Mass customization: The production of individualized products at costs approaching those of mass production. Automakers use configurable options while preserving high-volume factory operations.
Automation: The use of control systems and machinery to perform tasks with reduced human intervention. Automotive manufacturing is a prominent setting for large-scale industrial automation.

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