Henry Ford's Impact on Mass Production
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ScribdTranslationsHenry Ford's Impact on Mass Production
Translated by
ScribdTranslationsWednesday, May 8, 2019
ANALYSIS OF HENRY FORD
Degree: Industrial Engineering in Quality and Productivity.
Jorge Yahir Vega Candela
Master: Engineer Alejandro Martínez Márquez.
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Wednesday, May 8, 2019
This analysis arose after watching a 40-minute documentary on YouTube, in which
he explains to us the life of an American businessman named Henry Ford born in
(Dearborn, Michigan, 1863-1947). He received a basic elementary education.
I specialize as a machinist technician in the Detroit industry. As soon as the
Germans started to launch the first cars on the market, Ford became interested in
the invention and started to build his own prototypes. However, these failed.
They also explain to us that the key to Henry Ford's success lay in his procedure for
reduce manufacturing costs: mass production, also known as Fordism.
This method tells us that it was inspired by the working style of the slaughterhouses in Detroit,
consisted of installing an assembly line based on conveyor belts and guides of
sliding that were automatically moving the car chassis until the
positions where successive groups of workers carried out tasks in it
ordered, until the car was completely finished. The system of
interchangeable parts, tested long before in American arms factories and
watches, lowered production and repair costs through standardization of the
product.
The assembly line, with which Ford revolutionized the automotive industry, was a
risky bet, as it would only be viable if it found a demand capable of absorbing
its massive production; the dimensions of the North American market offered a framework
favorable, but Ford also correctly assessed the purchasing power of man
American media at the gates of consumer society.
As long as there was that demand, mass production allowed for savings in losses.
working time, as workers do not have to move from one place to another within the factory,
taking the recommendations of the 'scientific organization of work' to the extreme
by F. W. Taylor. Each operation was compartmentalized into a succession of tasks
mechanical and repetitive, which rendered technical qualifications worthless or
artisanal work of the workers, and the emerging industry could better take advantage of the labor force
without the qualifications of the immigrants who arrived en masse to the United States each year.
The training costs of the workforce were reduced, while the
the dequalification of the workforce eliminated the uncomfortable reivindicative activity of the
trade unions (based on the professional qualification of their members), which were the
the only labor organizations that had strength at that time in the United States.
At the same time, the company's management was gaining strict control over the pace of
the work of the workers, regulated by the speed that was applied to the assembly line.
The reduction of costs allowed Ford to raise the salaries it offered to
their workers far above what was normal in the North American industry of
the era: with its famous salary of five dollars a day, it ensured a workforce
satisfied and non-conflictive, to which I could impose strict rules of conduct within
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and outside the factory, watching over his private life through a 'department of
sociology. The Ford workers entered, thanks to the high salaries that
they were receiving, at the threshold of the middle class, becoming potential consumers
of products like the cars that Ford sold; a whole social transformation occurred
I was going to operate in the United States with the adoption of these business methods.