The importance of Henry Ford.
According to many industrial historians, Henry Ford’s innovation of the Model T, the moving belt assembly line, and the five-dollar, eight hour day have had more important consequences than Lenin’s socialist revolution (Flink, 1981).
The automobile was enthusiastically received by Americans from its introduction into society even before the introduction of the Model T by Ford. The climate in the United States towards the desirability of individual transportation was formed by the widespread popularity of the bicycle that was seen in the 1890s. According to Flink (1981), farmers and city consumers alike began to perceive cheaper highway transportation as an alternative to the monopolistic power of the railroads. Because of the vast size of the United States, large areas remained inaccessible even after railroads were common and most Americans still lived on isolated farms or in poorly connected villages. In the city, the automobile was viewed as a clean alternative to the health and traffic problems caused by horses.
"And, perhaps more important, the motorcar offered our individualistic, migrant population the promise of greatly expanded personal mobility and freedom of choice in residence, business location, and the pursuit of leisure-time activities" (Flink, 1981, p. 166).
Henry Ford was the most successful of the early car manufacturers in the United States. He was born on a Michigan farm in 1863; and, because of this background, he had a life-long aversion to the drudgery of farm labor. Ford was a tinkerer and, while an engineer at Detroit’s’ Edison Illuminating Company in 1896, he built his first automobile. After two unsuccessful attempts to produce an automobile commercially, Ford gained his success with the foundation of the Ford Motor Company, begun in 1903. Ford was committed to producing low cost cars--in this regard, he was different from his competitors who focused on building higher priced cars for the more limited luxury market. The Model T, his most famous car, was introduced in 1908 for under $900. His advertising for the car was correct and showcased its popularity--"No car under $2,000 offers more, and no car over $2,000 offers more except the trimmings." Because of his use of mass production techniques to build the Model T, Ford was able to reduce the price of it to $345 for the runabout and $360 for the touring car in 1916.
Henry Ford produced the first modern car. By this conception, a modern car is one that is produced by mass production methods and is affordable to all middle class people in the society. And, that is what made the Model T so popular. Ford boasted that he made a car that the workers (workers in his assembly line) could afford to buy. Ford is also known for his payment of his workers. In 1914, Ford started the five dollar, eight hour day, which more than doubled wages for a shorter work day. By this move, Ford was paying more money for semi-skilled workers to work for him than were other manufacturers who employed craftsmen.
During the 1920s, Henry Ford as widely admired as the premier among American capitalists. Worldwide, his accomplishments were acclaimed and, during his lifetime, he had more written about him than any figure in American history (Flink, 1981). However, his reputation has been tarnished by his activities that were not as well-published during this time. He was blamed for the deterioration of working conditions in his plant as well as for writing anti-Semitic articles published in the Dearborn Independent. Also, as he became more powerful in the car industry, Ford tended toward autocratic rule and arbitrary management of his company.] end of bio on Henry Ford
Henry Ford and the assembly line. Henry Ford was not the first to use the assembly line--that credit belong to England, Brunel, and its shipbuilding industry--however, Henry Ford took the idea of the assembly line and transformed it so that it became a major component of the American industrial system. Ford's use of the assembly line to produce the Model T was revolutionary because "it brought the principles of conveyance and controlled movement to a metal-based industry where the problems of standardized parts and steady power had first to be solved" (Hirschhorn, 1984, p. 10).
Two developments, electricity and scientific management (the latter became known as industrial management after World War I), established the technical basis for the principle of continuity. The continuity of this assembly line, as we have seen, emerged from the interplay of technical and managerial development in both the Ford Motor Company and in other industries. Giedion (1948) has placed the work of Henry Ford on the assembly line at the end of a long process of technological developments including the production of interchangeable parts, the idea of continuous flow, the efficiency movement, and the disassembly lines of the Chicago slaughterhouses.
Ford, when he started, redesigned the factory layout in order to allow for the volume production of cars. He put a great emphasis on designing machine tools that would increase output. By 1914, about 15,000 new machines had been installed in the Highland Park plant. Ford engineers used time-and-motion studies to install continuous conveyor belts to bring materials to the assembly lines. By the summer of 1913, three subassemblies (magnetos, motors, and transmissions) were assembled on moving lines. Because these moving lines produced subassemblies faster than the main production line could take them, a moving chassis line was added--this reduced the chassis assembly time from 12 1/2 hours in October to 2 hours, 40 minutes in December, 1913 (Flink, 1981).
"Every piece of work in the shop moves. It may move on hooks or overhead chains going to assembly in the exact order in which the parts are required; it may travel on a moving platform; or it may go by gravity, but the point is that there is no lifting or trucking of anything than materials" (Henry Ford, cited in Flink, 1981, p. 170).