The Assembly Line
Henry Ford determined that a market existed for cheap standardized cars, and he moved toward mass production. He first recognized that a more efficient assembling of cars — and one not relying on skilled fitters — required precision made parts. He assumed control over the manufacture of components, innovating with new precision machinery and measuring devices. In addition, he began assembly-line production of larger components with the well-honed smaller elements that he could now produce.
Henry Ford pioneered the use of the assembly line in manufacturing automobiles. Using conveyor belts, factory workers put different parts together quickly and relatively inexpensively -- like a mechanical puzzle. Ford's Model-T was the first car produced in this fashion, and it could be assembled more quickly and consistently than had ever been possible before. Each person who works on an assembly line is responsible for doing the same job on each car. For example, someone might be responsible only for attaching the rearview mirror. This person would do the task so many times that he or she would become an expert at it and be able to do it very quickly.
With innovations in parts production, Ford then decided to extend the assembly-line principle to the actual building of cars. In 1910, he opened his revolutionary Highland Park plant on the outskirts of Detroit, Michigan. The plant included areas for assembly-line parts production and what would be the famed moving assembly line along which tens of thousands of mass production workers toiled, tediously attaching separate pieces to Ford’s model T car. Probably no factory changed life in 20th century America as much as the Highland Park Ford Plant. It was here, that Henry Ford and his engineers developed many of the crucial principles of modern mass production. The most notable of these was the continuously moving assembly line; its introduction in late 1913 reduced the assembly time of a Model T from 728 to 93 minutes. By 1920 the plant turned out a car every minute, and one out of every two automobiles in the world was a Model T.
Ford’s system, however, did not work as flawlessly as intended (all the publicity it received withstanding). The rapid pace of production enabled Ford to pay his workers far higher wages, but it also created a relentless monotony that many of his employees detested. The Ford assembly line provided unbearable work. The company experienced extreme labor turnover — in the 400 percent range in the 1910s.
To achieve greater stability, Ford launched a number of benevolent programs. The most famous was the Five Dollar A Day plan announced in 1914, which offered, for then, the very high wage of $5 a day to loyal employees. To be eligible, workers and their families first had to be screened to determine whether they were worthy members of the community. In later years, Ford tried other schemes, including the recruitment of African-American workers through local black churches, but all of the company’s benevolence was matched by vehement anti-unionism.
Starting in 1908, Albert Kahn, who would become the country's foremost industrial architect, created a series of brick, concrete, and steel buildings that included features that came to define proper factory design: large, open floors that allowed for the efficient arrangement of machinery; expansive windows that brought in additional light and created a more pleasant and productive working environment ; and the potential for expansion or connection of additional structures to meet increased demand. Even that last characteristic, however, could not prevent Ford from outgrowing Highland Park, and so in the late 1920s the company moved its production center east to the sprawling River Rouge plant.
The Ford River Rouge Complex may be the world's most famous auto plant. In 1915 Henry Ford bought 2000 acres along the Rouge River west of Detroit, intending to use the site only to make coke, smelt iron, and build tractors. Over the next dozen years, however, the company turned the Rouge, as it became known, into the most fully integrated car manufacturing facility in the world. By 1927, when Ford shifted its final assembly line from Highland Park to the Rouge, the complex included virtually every element needed to produce a car: blast furnaces, an open hearth mill, a steel rolling mill, a glass plant, a huge power plant and, of course, an assembly line. Ninety miles of railroad track and miles more of conveyor belts connected these facilities, and the result was mass production of unparalleled sophistication and self-sufficiency. "By the mid-1920's," wrote historian David L. Lewis, "the Rouge was easily the greatest industrial domain in the world" and was "without parallel in sheer mechanical efficiency."
By the late 1920s, Ford’s standardized production methods proved an impediment. General Motors, a new conglomerate of automotive firms, surpassed Ford with a revolutionary sales strategy that emphasized varied and changing car styles. GM’s ploy required a more flexible production system than at Ford, using more all-purpose than specialized machinery and relying more on skilled labor. Ford adjusted to the challenge only slowly.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
