People & History 3, The Assembly Line and Henry Ford
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Gigantic robot arms glide swiftly along tracks, quickly and efficiently welding pieces together. Workers step in and around the machines, installing dashboards, windshields, and hundreds of other items, as the partially assembled cars move ceaselessly through the factory. This is the modern assembly line, and the first man to envision it was Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company.
Henry Ford was born in 1863 on his family’s farm in Dearborn, Michigan. As a young man, Ford showed more interest in mechanics than farming and spent his time maintaining and improving the farm’s machines. At sixteen, he left the family farm to work as an apprentice machinist. Later, he was employed by both Westinghouse and the Edison Illuminating Company.
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Ford’s early attempts to create an automotive company were fraught with difficulty. His first company went bankrupt in 1899, and investors forced him out of his second company in 1901. His third attempt was successful. The Ford Motor Company was formed in 1903, and within ten years, it was one of the dominant players in the early American auto industry. After Ford introduced the moving assembly line, his company surged ahead of all its competitors. By 1918, over half the cars sold in the United States were made by the Ford Motor Company.
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In the early twentieth century, the assembly line was a new concept. Previously, when complicated manufacturing was required, a small group of highly skilled workers would hover over the product, working together until it was completed. An assembly line is a different matter. Instead of a small number of skilled workers building an entire machine, an assembly line uses a large number of unskilled workers, each concentrating on a single task.
The first assembly lines were less sophisticated than those of today and were used to make only simple products that required few steps to complete. The product was moved "down the line" by the workers themselves, who carried or pushed the product to the next workstation once their task was finished.
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In 1913, Henry Ford embraced a new idea called the moving assembly line. Conveyor belts moved the product down the line so that Ford’s workers no longer wasted time moving from place to place or going back and forth for parts and tools. "Move the work, not the workers" became the motto of the Ford Motor Company. Just as streams connect to a river, multiple assembly lines converged with the main line, and parts arrived in time for workers to install them. Each worker had a very specific task. One worker would install the steering wheels and nothing else. Another worker would install only the cars’ doors, while another would install just the door handles.
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The moving assembly line was an amazing success. Prior to adopting this strategy, a Ford factory needed over half a day to complete a car. After adopting the moving assembly line, a car could be manufactured in an hour and a half. Ford’s success is even more astounding when you consider that rather than rely on outside suppliers, he manufactured most of the 1,200 or more parts that went into his cars himself.
Ford’s greatest success was undoubtedly the Model T. Ford first began producing the Model T in 1908, before he adopted the assembly line. By the end of 1913, the Model T was the best-selling car in the United States. Ford’s strategy was the opposite of his competitors’. By making his factories as efficient as possible, Ford was able to mass-produce goods that could then be sold at the lowest possible cost. Each car was sold at a small profit, but Ford sold so many cars that, overall, his company was the most profitable.
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The price of the Model T was deliberately kept low, sometimes at the expense of style. It was famed for being "available in any color, so long as it’s black." Black paint was cheaper and dried much faster than other colors. As sales of the Model T grew, Ford was able to sell the car at lower and lower prices. At a time when a reliable car typically cost $1,500, a Model T could be bought for $825. By the time the Model T was replaced by the Model A, more than fifteen million had been sold.
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The work of an assembly line employee is not easy. There is little job satisfaction to be found standing in front of a conveyor belt, attaching the same part to another, hour after hour. Henry Ford understood this problem and sought to improve the lives of his workers. In 1914, soon after he introduced the assembly line, Ford reduced the length of his workers’ shifts to eight hours. Many factories at that time had their employees work ten-hour shifts every day. He also raised the minimum day’s pay from $2.34 to $5.00. Doubling the salary of his employees was a move that stunned Ford’s competitors, but Ford won the loyalty of his employees.
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In 1926, Ford again reorganized his workforce. Ford’s employees went from a six-day workweek to a five-day, forty-hour workweek. By the standards of the time, Ford’s employees were very well paid and had a generous amount of time to spend with their families. Some historians claim that Henry Ford "invented the weekend."
Ford’s goal was not just to make his company profitable. Henry Ford said, "I will build a motor car for the multitude. It will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one─and enjoy with his family the blessing of pleasure in God’s greatest open spaces." Ford was not just building cars; he was trying to improve the wealth of the country so that employees could afford to buy the goods they helped build. He hoped to make every American wealthier, not just himself.
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If Henry Ford were alive today, he would recognize the modern assembly line as a descendant of his design. The biggest change since Ford’s time is the use of computers and robots. Robots can lift and lower heavy parts into place with great safety and accuracy. Ford would also have admired "just in time" inventory. In the past, millions of dollars were spent keeping large amounts of inventory on the factory site. Today, suppliers and manufacturers work together to supply needed parts just in time so that manufacturers do not need to warehouse a great number of parts.
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The future for car manufacturers appears to be one in which the assembly line becomes increasingly flexible. Today’s most sophisticated production lines can shift from making one type of car to another in order to quickly meet changing customer demands. Another growing trend is custom manufacturing. With the help of computers and automated assembly lines, products can be assembled to meet each customer’s individual taste. The future factory will be as efficient as Ford would want, and it will offer greater choice to consumers─a variety beyond the dreams of the man who manufactured a car that was "available in any color, so long as it’s black."