Diff for "AssemblyLine"

America's Assembly Line

David E. Nye, 2023 / 670.43 NYE Tigard Library

Henry Ford sponsored the modern electrically-powered conveyor assembly line with specialized single-function workstations, and the five day work week. Ford also appreciated and hired and groomed expertise, both in his engineers and his line workers.

Ford also paid high wages, providing workers with the means to purchase automobiles and other mass-produced products. Competitors adopted the same procedures to compete for workers and for product sales.

• 023 Ford's 1920's Time Study Department subdivided work into quickly-learned small operations of two minute duration (4 workers in parallel for 8 minute operations).
• 024 Almost 8000 different jobs in the factory. 1000 heavy, 3300 ordinary, 3600 light (employing the weak or disabled). Blind one-legged workers seldom quit.
• 025 Electric drive produced more accurate (thus interchangeable) parts than mechanical drive
• 025 machines grouped by work sequence, not type
• 025 strong building construction permitted heavy machinery on upper floors
• 026 in-house production of parts

• 027 adequate lighting improved efficiency and accuracy at the 1911 Highland Park factory

• 028 1909 Model T assembled in 12 hours, 1914 in 93 minutes

• 029 1926 Model T < $300, or $5000 in 2024 dollars

• 034 Winslow Taylor 1911 The Principles of Scientific Management

• 047 Albert Kahn architect of Highland Park and 1917 River Rouge plants

• 053 workers felt indispensable and empowered by powerful machinery, took pride in the larger accomplishment

• 059 synchronized swimming, Rockettes (yuck)

• 063 Life in a Technocracy: What it Might Be Like Harold Loeb 1933

• 069 WW1, lightweight high clearance Model T better on bomb damaged roads:
  • You exasperating puzzle Hunka Tin,
  • I've abused you and I've flayed you,
  • But by Henry Ford who made you
  • You are better than a big car, Hunka Tin.

• 070 Henry Ford's 1922 book My Life and Work ("... World" error in "Assembly Line"

• 071 1924 Ford plant in Copenhagen profitable, most European plants not
• 076 Taylor and Ford books popular in Soviet Union, but peasants unskilled
• 096-125 Critique

• 096 1937 Battle of the Overpass photo

• 111 Joel Dinnerstein Swinging the Machine 2013: African-American music adopted these factory sounds and rhythms.

• 127-134 World War 2 production in US

• 134 W. Edwards Deming Statistical Quality Control

• 138 Marshall Plan 1948, Germany world's 2nd industrial power in 5 years

• 139 Arthur Schlesinger Jr. The Vital Center 1949

• 139 Economic Cooperation Administration 1948

• 140 Raymond Léopold Bruckberger book Image of America

• 144 John Atlee Kouwenhoven Made in America

• 145 David M. Potter People of Plenty

• 146 Robert Frank The Americans

• 147 Increased wages, longer hours

• 148 Harvey Swados essay The Myth of the Happy Worker

• 149 Buckminster Fuller

• 150 William Levitt Levittown

• 150 Joseph Eichler California tract homes

• 152 I Love Lucy stamp

• 153 David Reisman's The Lonely Crowd 1950

• 157-158 Jack Williamson The Humanoids Kurt Vonnegut Player Piano Phillip K. Dick Autofac

• 158 Elektro

• 159 The Human Use of Human Beings Norbert Wiener 1950 in KHL library

• 162 1932 Can seal tester photo, 300/minute
• 164 during 1950s, industrial production rose 43%, coal up 96%, blue collar employment dropped 10%
• 164 United Auto Workers 1953 "... obsolete as producers because the mechanicak monsters around them cannot replace them as consumers."
• 166 JFK: "...find 25,000 new jobs every week to take care of those displaced by machines."
• 168 Ernest van den Haag 1957 "production of standardized things ... demands ... standardized persons"
• 169 1956 "Invasion of the body snatchers" film

• 172 The technological society, Ellul, 1957 trans 1964

• 178 Lordstown 1971 GM Vega, no line job takes more than half an hour to learn, ... keep up with the line in half a shift

• 182 soviet line workers exercising, 1972

• 182The man on the assembly line, Walker, 1953

• 185 1990 MIT researchers "lean production"
• 187 1950 US workers 5 times more productive, 1990 Europe and Japan closed gap, Belgium Norway Netherlands exceeded
• 188 even though US productivity rose 250%, blue collars from 1/4 to 1/6 of all US employees
• 188 US sales peaked at 9.7M in 1973, then oil embargo
• 189 US hobbled by incremental change and path dependence

• 191 The chrysanthemum and the sword : patterns of Japanese culture, Ruth Benedict 1946 PSU Internet Archive

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