Making and Selling Cars: Innovation and Change in the U.S. Automotive Industry

1. From Fordist Production . . .

✺ The michigan Historical Commission designated the Ford Motor Company’s former Highland Park plant a historical site in 1956. The historical site marker reads: “Home of Model T. Here at his Highland Park Plant, Henry Ford in 1913 began the mass production of automobiles on a moving assembly line. By 1915, Ford had built a million model T’s. In 1925, over 9,000 were assembled in a single day. Mass production soon moved from here to all phases of American industry, and set the pattern of abundance for 20th Century living.” The term Fordism, or Fordist production, recognizes the central role of automobile manufacturers, especially the Ford Motor Company, in creating the twentieth century’s dominant mode of industrial production. The power of the term Fordism comes from two reinforcing elements: first, the overwhelming success of the mass production techniques pioneered at Ford; and second, the towering personality of Henry Ford himself as a principal spokesman, personification, and philosopher for the industrial age. Contemporary revisionists play down the importance of the moving assembly line. “Although Ford’s achievement is popularly attributed to his introduction of the assembly line, this was only a small part of the revolution . . . . There was nothing original in either the detail or the general principles which Ford applied to automobile production.”1 The moving assembly line was first used in Cincinnati and Chicago, in the slaughterhouses of the meat-packing industry, where hog carcasses were brought on overhead trolleys past each worker, who took his cut. Similarly, Minneapolis flour-milling firms used automated systems to move grain through milling operation. 3 Why don’t we assemble the motors like they kill hogs in Chicago? —C. Harold Wills, chief engineering assistant at Ford Motor Co., 1912 1 From Fordist Production . . . Looking back on Fordism, contemporary writers often deemphasize the importance of Ford’s mass production innovations, and the force of the man himself has faded into history. Yet the production processes introduced at Ford remained remarkably unchanged until the end of the century , and Henry Ford’s words and deeds shaped much of the industrial era. It has been said that Ford’s moving assembly line “inaugurated a new epoch in the industrial history of modern society. Many centuries before, Archimedes, exulting in his invention of the lever, had declared that if he had a fulcrum he could move the world. Mass production furnished the lever and fulcrum which now shifted the globe.”2 The process of assembling motor vehicles changed little over the decades following Ford’s mass production revolution. The body and chassis were built on separate lines within the final-assembly plant and then brought together near the end. On the chassis build-up line, most of the powertrain components—such as the engine, transmission, steering gear, driveshaft, differential, brakes, axles, wheels, tires, springs, and exhaust— were attached to a frame. Meanwhile, on the body build-up line, body panels were welded together, the doors were installed, the body was painted, and passenger compartment components—such as windshields, seats, instrument panel, steering column, heater, and radio—were attached. Near the end of the assembly line, the body was dropped onto the chassis, and the vehicle received additional components, such as radiator, fenders, hood, battery, and bumpers (Fig. 1.1). Completed vehicles were tested and inspected before being driven out of the building for shipping. Beginning in the 1960s most cars and some trucks were assembled through “unitized” construction. In the body build-up operations, the body sides, roof, and fenders were welded to the frame, and doors, hood, and trunk were fitted. The body was taken to the paint shop for chemical treatment, protective sealing, and painting, and the doors were removed. On the final-assembly line, the engine, transmission, glass, instrument panel, seats, and other interior components were attached, then the doors were reattached. Unitized construction resulted in vehicles with fewer shakes, rattles, and rolls than vehicles assembled through the old “bodydrop ” approach. Final-assembly plants were rearranged rather than fundamentally redesigned to accommodate the new procedure (Fig. 1.2). The moving assembly line still fascinates visitors, as a maze of belts and chains delivers a never-ending succession of parts, some painted different colors and others all alike. The sequencing of the line appears bewildering, in part because tours invariably begin in the middle or near the end of the Making Motor Vehicles ✺ 4 From Fordist Production . . . line, never...