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an arrangement of machines, tools, and workers in which a product is assembled by having each perform a specific, successive operation on an incomplete unit as it passes by in a series of stages organized in a direct line.
Contemporary Examples

Cordon off a few key machines and the assembly line cannot function.
How Do You Strike a Walmart? Megan McArdle November 23, 2012

“It’s an assembly line,” says Chloe Hilliard, an up-and-coming African American New York City-based working stand up comic.
SNL’s Kenan Thompson and the Invisible Black Women of Comedy Tricia Romano October 16, 2013

Going to pieces can be liberating, she realizes, perhaps even more liberating than finding work on an assembly line.
American Dreams, 1943: ‘Two Serious Ladies’ by Jane Bowles Nathaniel Rich May 29, 2013

An assembly line is a delicate process that can be stopped by holding one of dozens of chokepoints hostage.
How Do You Strike a Walmart? Megan McArdle November 23, 2012

Apparently thinks that Jeremy went to college to get a job on an assembly line.
Debate Liveblogging Megan McArdle October 16, 2012

Historical Examples

This was at a blockhouse just outside the New Zealand assembly line.
From Bapaume to Passchendaele, 1917 Philip Gibbs

It was, purely and simply, an assembly line; and fully automated in operation.
Masters of Space Edward Elmer Smith

At the very end of this assembly line a crane was loading a finished object onto a flat-bed trailer.
Space Platform Murray Leinster

“The first car has just been turned off the assembly line,” Leibowitz said.
Out Like a Light Gordon Randall Garrett

Voice interruption priority system—used for assembly line production control.
The Practical Values of Space Exploration Committee on Science and Astronautics

noun
a sequence of machines, tools, operations, workers, etc, in a factory, arranged so that at each stage a further process is carried out

A line of factory workers and equipment along which a product being assembled passes consecutively from operation to operation until completed.

Note: Assembly lines are found in many industries but are particularly associated with automobile manufacturing.