How It Worked
The moving assembly line utilized conveyor belts and overhead tracks to get the manufacturing process done more efficiently than previous assembly lines, which required high-skilled craftsmen and took significantly longer. It worked by using a main spine with workstations branching off of it—similar to a fish skeleton. Each worker had a specific job. He would perform this same job over and over again throughout the entire process of building the item. These jobs consisted of very simple processes that virtually anyone could do, such as placing a piston in the proper position, etc. After the procedure was completed, the part was then passed on to the next worker, who would begin his process. Each employee performed this routine until the article was completed. This system met an urgent need and catapulted Ford Motor Company into the forefront of American industry.
Men putting new parts on the Model T
"Ford introduced modular assembly, a novel system whereby subassemblies or modules of a vehicle are produced on automated ancillary lines that then feed the main assembly line."
~Russ Banham A personal memorandum about the moving assembly line
"The principles of assembly are these:(1) Place the tools and the men in the sequence of the operation so that each component part shall travel the least possible distance while in the process of finishing.(2) Use work slides or some other form of carrier so that when a workman completes his operation, he drops the part always in the same place—which place must always be the most convenient place to his hand—and if possible have gravity carry the part to the next workman for his operation.(3) Use sliding assembly lines by which the parts to be assembled are delivered at convenient distances."
~Henry Ford A wide view of a floor inside the Highland Park Plant
"It's wonderful! Wonderful! I am amazed at the magnitude of the establishment."
~President William Taft |
An excerpt from a CarDataVideo explaining how the frame is assembled at one point and the car bodies at another
"... the Ford engineers devised a plan whereby there is a steady progression of materials as they enter the factory on the one side in a crude state and, without one backward movement, go straight ahead until the completed car leaves the factory on the other side. The general movement is from north to south."
~Steven Watts Employees creating steering wheels for the Model T
Workers placing pieces and parts on the Model T as it rolls down the assembly line
"But to my mind, unaccustomed to such things, the whole room, with its interminable aisles, its whirling shafts and wheel, its forest of the roof-supporting posts and flapping, flying, leather belting, its endless rows of the writhing machinery, its shrieking, hammering, and clatter, its smell of oil, its aluminum haze of smoke, its savage-looking foreign population-to my mind it expressed but one thing and that was delirium....Fancy a jungle of the wheels and belts and weird iron forms-of men, machinery and movement-add to it every kind of sound you can imagine."
~An annoymous visitor to Highland Park Former Ford foremen share their experiences
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