The so-called assembly line operation is to split the production process of an item into several steps, and then several workers who are only responsible for a single step take turns to complete the entire operation.
To give a practical example, to make a stool, you need to first make wooden boards and wooden slats, then make the wooden boards into the stool surface, make the wooden slats into the stool legs and rails, and finally assemble them.
If a carpenter were to do it, he would first need to find a suitable tree, then chop it down, make it into lumber, process the lumber into boards and strips, and then make the stool piece by piece. In this way, a carpenter can only make one stool at a time, and it requires a lot of time and effort. If you need to make a lot of stools, either wait patiently or find more carpenters.
But if you use the assembly line method, the people who cut the trees only need to cut the trees, the people who handle the wood only need to process the wood, the people who make the boards and battens, the people who make the stool surfaces, stool legs and rails, and the people who are responsible for the final assembly are all different people . They only need to concentrate on part of their work and don't need to know too much. In this case, as long as an ingenious person can complete the work with a little training, there is no need to work for a professional skilled worker - a carpenter - for this small thing.
Moreover, because each group of workers only needs to be responsible for their own part of the work, their skills will improve quickly, and before long, the stools they make will be no worse than those made by carpenters.
Because they always only know one thing, the labor is naturally not as expensive as a professional carpenter. Therefore, even if the production efficiency is slightly lower, the total cost can be reduced a lot.
Not only that, as workers become more proficient, production efficiency will increase. In the end, their overall production efficiency can exceed that of most carpenters, providing greater profits to the workshop owners.
The most important thing is that the number of carpenters is limited, and it is impossible to train too many - it takes at least five years to train a skilled carpenter, and this is just for making stools. If the things to be made are more complicated, , it may even take ten years.
In contrast, it only takes a few months at most to train a group of skilled workers for assembly operations.
This means that the workshop can have a high output, enough to open up supply and occupy the market.
In this world, most handicrafts are in short supply, so the prices are often a bit high - for example, a stool, in some remote places where carpenters are in short supply, may even cost four or five times as much as in prosperous places.
In fact, in those remote and poor places, people directly use wooden piles as stools.
Although that wooden pile might be able to be made into three or four stools, it often costs less than one-tenth of the price of a stool.
There is an example that illustrates the problem - since the Northwest Republic used the assembly line method to produce armor and weapons, Void City has now become the world's largest armor and weapons trading place, and is even moving towards "the world's largest arms supply" Business" is making steady progress in this direction.
All this is just because of an inconspicuous technology.
Sui Xiong did not keep secrets in particular, but the Northwest Republic Armor and Weapons Workshop paid great attention to confidentiality and never leaked the technology.
The Goddess of Wealth did not steal their technology, but she told some big businessmen who believed in her the idea of "assembly flow method".
Those merchants naturally did not dare to compete with Void City for business - the goddess of wealth probably warned them at that time, but there are so many things that can be produced in the world. They do not produce armor and weapons, but this does not prevent them from producing such things as woodware, decorations, etc. All kinds of furniture and daily necessities.
Anyway, as long as you can make money, does it matter what you produce
Just like gold coins...
It's just that the goddess of wealth never expected that this borderline thief would actually bring herself such huge trouble.
This caught him off guard, and made him even more distressed and unimaginable.
In the past ten years or so, businessmen have been tolerant and making concessions. They watched helplessly as they could not make the money they could, and they were in pain and tangled in their hearts.
Now, they finally couldn't bear it any longer.
Not only that, in the Gold Coin Federation, the aristocratic faction and the merchant faction have always had conflicts. This contradiction has been buried since the founding of the country. It has accumulated and fermented over the years. It is almost like a barrel of gunpowder. As long as it is touched by sparks, it will There could be a "boom" at any time, blowing everyone to pieces.
The root of the conflict comes from "how to spend the money after making it."
Some people want to be safe, so they choose to buy land and people and manage their territory; others want to be enterprising, so they choose to expand their business and make it bigger and bigger.
At first, these two people were in harmony with each other, but as time went by, the former slowly developed into a nobleman who controlled various territories, and the latter slowly developed into a big businessman who controlled many trade routes. As a result, conflicts gradually emerged - merchants made profits by selling things, while the nobles found that the wealth they gained from their operations was far less than the merchants' gains from transactions, so they demanded taxes from them.
That was the first major conflict between the aristocratic faction and the merchant faction of the Gold Coin Federation, and it almost reached the point of civil war. Finally, under the mediation of the Goddess of Wealth, the two parties sat down to negotiate. After almost two years of difficult negotiations, a tax collection standard that was barely acceptable to both parties was drawn up.
Going forward, the lords hope to consolidate their rule and do not allow forces that can threaten their rule to exist in the territory. Merchants must be able to protect their property no matter where they go, and they even do not want forces that can threaten their property. exist.
This was the second major conflict in the Gold Coin Federation. Naturally, the merchants gave in as a result. In the end, most of the major commercial banks chose to build their headquarters outside the city, which increased a lot of expenses and risks.
As the saying goes, you can't do it again, this time the businessmen will never give in. They shouted, "We have already given in twice," and asked the noble lords to give in once too.
But the noble lords have long been accustomed to merchants making concessions. How could they be willing to make concessions
Of course, there is also the promotion of the Church of the Noble God behind this. The Church of the Noble God declares that the noble lords should rule their own territories. In addition to being loyal to the superior lords, they have no need to make concessions to other secular forces, let alone allow those who seem to A large business organization with extraterritorial jurisdiction exists.
This statement was obviously inconsistent with the teachings of the Goddess of Wealth, and was scorned by businessmen. However, many nobles do not believe this on the surface, but secretly they often applaud this statement. The lobbyists sent by the Church of the Noble God can always eat and drink well in their mansions and be entertained by distinguished guests.
"Perhaps..." The goddess of wealth was silent for a long time, and finally said listlessly, "I was wrong from the beginning. It is impossible for a pure merchant country to exist..."