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INDUSTRY
- June 2001 by Dr. Arlie Hall Productivity
Pioneers The millionth Ford automobile was completed on Dec. 10, 1915. Five million had been completed on May 28, 1921. By June 4, 1924, 10 million had been completed. Within a short time thereafter, Ford was building two million automobiles each year. These amazing achievements wouldn’t have been possible without the aid of Charles E. Sorensen’s idea that moving the chassis along a route to materials and tools through the plant would be more efficient. It was Sorensen, with Charles Lewis, another talented Ford manager, who came in on a Sunday and tested the idea for the first time in 1910. Sorensen’s account of his revolutionary development, in his own words: As may be imagined, the job of putting the car together was a simpler one than handling the materials that had to be brought to it. We gradually worked it out by bringing up what we termed the fast-moving materials. The main bulky parts, like engines and axles, needed a lot of room. To give them that space, we left the smaller, more compact, light handling material in a storage building. Then we arranged with the stock department to bring up at regular hours such divisions of material as we had marked out and packaged. This simplification of handling cleaned things up materially. But at best, I did not like it. It was then that the idea occurred to me that assembly would be easier, simpler and faster if we moved the chassis along, beginning at one end of the plant with a frame and adding the axles and the wheels; then moving it past the stockroom, instead of moving the stockroom to the chassis. (Ohno, 1988) Sorensen and Lewis re-arranged the layout of the plant to model their moving chassis idea. Sorensen said, “We spent every Sunday during July planning this method.” (Ohno, 1988) Then they worked to get the material all arranged for their first experiment. Again, Sorensen said about the experiment, “Then one Sunday morning, after the stock was laid out in this fashion, Lewis and I and a couple of helpers put together the first car, I’m sure, that was ever built on a moving line.” (Ohno, 1988) The basic pattern that Sorensen and Lewis used has not changed much since the Sunday they first tried it out. Almost all automobiles are made using their system today. In the 1920s, the Ford’s Rouge Complex in Dearborn became the benchmark for best-in-the-world manufacturing techniques. These included just-in-time delivery and just-in-time manufacturing. Sorensen had provided the needed material management system that would allow the Rouge facility to achieve its distinction by he 1920s. The basic model was now in place to allow Henry Ford to pursue his vision: “The true end of industry is to liberate mind and body from the drudgery of existence by filling the world with well made, low-priced products.” (Ford, 1926) The technology was now in place for growth. Henry Ford said growth was necessary for life; for a business to grow, it must make a profit. However, Ford’s view of profit was from two perspectives. A business must make a profit for the buyer as well as for itself; otherwise it was his view that it was not a good business. Ford wrote, “The duty of every manager of industry is to encourage business by making it easy for people to obtain what they need at a price they can afford…Good management pays dividends in good wages, lower prices and more business…The only way to get a low-cost product is to pay a high price for a high grade of human service… For a business to achieve this goal, it needs leadership.” Ford was among the first to recognize the importance of good leadership. He said, “The world has always needed leadership…Neither military nor political leadership is creative…Times have improved and today political and military leadership cannot serve the people as well as industrial leadership….Professional reformers do not understand this. (Ford, 1926) So, I suppose we could add, not much has changed since Ford’s day. Ford also had some advice as to where to get started. He said, “Then start from where you stand and let the public make your business for you. The public and only the public can make a business…Since the public makes a business, the primary obligation of business is to the public…If an article cost a dollar less to produce than formerly, a dollar comes off the price charged the consumer…The test of the service of a corporation is how far its benefits are passed on to the consumer. The reduction of profits, in number and amount, on any commodity, is an instant and general community benefit. (Ford, 1926) Finally, Ford concluded the matter by coming back to the basic success unit, that of the worker. He
said, “A great modern industry progresses by the
unified thoughts and energies of many men. There is
cooperation based, not on emotional agreement or personal
preference, but on common interest in the job to be
done…Business can live only as it develops within
its corps of employees the talent and the force which
will carry the business along. Business lives by the
vigor and brains of the men it produces…All men are
not voluntarily intelligent; they must be taught. All men
do not see the high escape from drudgery in work by
putting intelligence into work; they must be taught. All
men do not see the wisdom of getting means to ends, of
conserving material (which is sacred as a result of
others’ labors), of saving that most precious
commodity—time; they must be taught.” (Ford,
1926) Dr. Arlie Hall is an
adjunct professor for the Center for Robotics and
Manufacturing at the University of Kentucky's College of
Engineering.
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