My Forty Years with Ford

4. What Made the Ford Organization Tick?

C H A P T E R What Made the Ford Organization Tick? J.WO events of 1903 were of momentous consequence to the world. At a beach near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Wilbur and Orville Wright were the first human beings to fly a heavier-than-air machine, and transport became three-dimensional. In Detroit, Ford Motor Company was incorporated. It was destined to make motor transport universal, to attain mass production, to demonstrate the superiority of an economy of abundance over one of scarcity, and to begin the elevation of a standard of living to a height never before dreamed of. Of those still living I am the most intimately connected with that development. Since 1893, when the Duryea brothers' gasoline buggy first clattered over the streets of Springfield, Massachusetts, there have been more than twelve hundred automobile companies and some two thousand different makes of cars. Today there are only six passenger-car makers. Why did the Ford company survive when twelve hundred others went out of business ? It was born at the right moment. The time was ripe for a cheap car. Ford had one. An inexpensive car requked 35 t 4 36 MY FORTY YEARS WITH FORD revolutionary cost-cutting production. Ford evolved it. Both car and production methods were unorthodox in that day, and the organization that developed them was likewise unorthodox . Its head was a single-purposed man who dominated yet at the same time delegated sweeping authority and responsibility. Its operations were intricate, yet experts were distrusted and virtually all executives came up from the ranks. When the music was not written, we improvised. When it was written, we had no time to learn to read—we played by ear. Judged by present-day standards Ford management was loose, eccentric , and as helter-skelter as a northwoods lumber camp. I shall abstain from claim or denial that such an organization would work today. My point is that no other would have done the job then, and my purpose is to indicate how it worked. The history of the Ford Motor Company comprises four periods. From 1903 to 1913 was the Couzens period. True, the company had Henry Ford's name, its product and production were his. There never would have been a Ford car without him. But the Ford Motor Company would not have made Ford cars long without James Couzens. He controlled expenditures , organized sales, and set the pattern for business operation. He drove Ford and the production side to produce cars to meet the public's demand. He yelled for plant expansion and drove us from the Piquette Avenue Plant into Highland Park. Everyone in the company, including Henry Ford, acknowledged him as the driving force during this period. From 1913 to 1925 was the Henry Ford-Edsel Ford period. By 1913 the company was firmly established financially. Its problems were almost exclusively those of production and its expansion, of manufacturing, and of supply. No sooner were WHAT MADE FORD ORGANIZATION TICK? 37 we established in Highland Park, with the world's biggest automobile plant and the most complete and efficient machine shop on earth, than both production and purchasing of cars expanded and we set our sights on a bigger plant. This period saw the moving assembly line and the flowering of mass production, the revolutionary $5 day, construction and operation of the mammoth River Rouge plant, and the peak of Ford automobile production. It also saw the Ford family become sole owners of Ford Motor Company through purchase of shares held by other stockholders. From 1925 to 1944 was the Sorensen period. Henry Ford acquired other interests, and Edsel, as president of Ford Motor Company, confined himself largely to administrative work. I was in charge of production and plant operation. Model T was abandoned for Model A; and then the company entered the Great Depression and carried on up to the early days of World War II with the V-8. Then the entire Ford plant turned to war production work. At first, my position was that of a viceroy, ruling the production province of the Ford Empire. After Henry Ford had a stroke and Edsel lapsed into his fatal illness, my position as executive vice-president became that of regent. Besides the war program, I had the selfimposed responsibility of maintaining the organization until I could persuade a reluctant Henry Ford, failing both mentally and...