assembly line

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun An arrangement of workers, machines, and equipment in which the product being assembled passes consecutively from operation to operation until completed.
• noun A process in which finished products are turned out in a mechanically efficient, though impersonal, manner.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun A line of machinery, tools, and workers on which objects to be manufactured are moved from one post to the next, where different workers perform different steps in the manufacturing process; called also production line. The objects to be manufactured usually move on a form of conveyor belt, which does not necessarily move only in a straight line, but may continue around the factory area for some distance.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun manufacturing A system of workers and machinery in which a product is assembled in a series of consecutive operations; typically the product is attached to a continuously moving belt

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun mechanical system in a factory whereby an article is conveyed through sites at which successive operations are performed on it