Editing Production line (section)

==History==
Early [[production process]]es were constrained by the availability of a source of [[energy]], with [[wind mill]]s and [[water mill]]s providing [[power (physics)|power]] for the crude heavy processes and [[Human resources|manpower]] being used for activities requiring more precision.  In earlier centuries, with raw materials, power and people often being in different locations, production was distributed across a number of sites.  The concentration of numbers of people in manufactories, and later the [[factory]] as exemplified by the [[cotton mill]]s of [[Richard Arkwright]], started the move towards co-locating individual processes.

===Introduction of the steam engine===
With the development of the [[steam engine]] in the latter half of the 18th century, the production elements became less reliant on the location of the power source, and so the processing of goods moved to either the source of the materials or the location of people to perform the tasks.  Separate processes for different treatment stages were brought into the same building, and the various stages of refining or manufacture were combined.

===Industrial Revolution===
With increasing use of steam power, and increasing use of [[machine]]ry to supplant the use of people, the integrated use of techniques in production lines spurred the [[Industrial Revolution]]s of [[Europe]] and [[North America]].