At Ford, we’re proud of our history and the tremendous improvements that have been done on productivity, sustainability and social responsibility over the years. Here’s a quick rundown of this evolution! No time to read it all? Watch the 100 second video summary above!
The Ford Piquette plant, second home of Ford manufacturing after the 58 Bagley Avenue barn in Henry Ford’s backyard, was truly the birth place of Ford’s vision of an inexpensive car for the masses. Built in 1904 for $76,500, it would serve to build the big Model K, the small Model N, and the world famous Model T. The plant, which has been completely restored and that you can visit today to see beautiful restored cars of many makes of this era, was built on the principles of manufacturing of the period: work bays where the cars being built stayed stationary and workers worked as teams to transport parts to the cars and build them from the ground up. This traditional way of working meant a car took 12.5 hours to build. After building 12,000 Model Ts’ with this method, Henry Ford had a better idea: the moving assembly line. This idea meant that only 6 years after building Piquette, Ford production moved to Highland Park Assembly line in 1910.
It is at this time that, in an effort to reduce manufacturing times to the absolute minimum, the famous Henry Ford quote “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black” was introduced. Prior to this, you could buy Model T’s in many colors such as the red and gold one above! The black only Model T’s permitted faster paint drying times, and was one of the reasons the time to build one was reduced to only 93 minutes. This lightning fast production time came from the philosophy of the scientific organization of work. Ford’s vision was a relentless success, and prices dropped while production increased, all the way until 1926-27, where production decreased and paved the way for the Model A. At this point, 15 million Model T’s had been built!
More than a century later, the Ford Motor Company is still improving on the concept of the moving assembly line. One of the best examples of these improvements is the Ford Rouge Center, open to the public for visits, sporting one of the world’s largest living roofs and one of the many homes of F-150 production. What do you think will happen in the next 100 years? Tell us your futurologist predictions in the comments!
* Model T Ford Club of America, “Model T Ford Production” – http://www.mtfca.com/encyclo/fdprod.htm
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T#Price_and_production