What organizational concept allowed efficiency to increase even beyond the speed of the sewing machine itself?
Answer
Division of labor, where workers specialized in single, repetitive tasks.
The centralization of labor into factories, particularly in places like the United States and Great Britain, provided the setting for the next major efficiency gain. This centralization enabled the implementation of the assembly line structure. Within this structure, the principle of division of labor took hold, meaning workers focused solely on one repetitive task related to garment creation, rather than handling the entire item from cutting to finishing. This specialization of tasks further amplified overall production efficiency beyond the inherent speed improvements provided by the mechanical sewing devices alone.
Related Questions
What constituted the assembly bottleneck before the sewing machine's breakthrough?What key inventions dramatically sped up thread and cloth creation during the initial Industrial Revolution phase?Where did the primary economic value of a garment shift after the widespread adoption of the sewing machine?By what factor did the sewing machine increase stitch speed compared to a very fast hand sewer?What organizational concept allowed efficiency to increase even beyond the speed of the sewing machine itself?What necessity drove the development of comprehensive, standardized size charts for clothing production?What stitch type, characterized by using a double thread, was characteristic of reliable, functional sewing machines?Which early ready-to-wear goods were the initial focus after the sewing machine enabled mass production?What fundamental skill requirement changed for clothing production workers post-1850s adoption of the machine?What later 20th-century machine specializations further drove factory efficiency and quality control?