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
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
- 147 Increased wages, longer hours
148 Harvey Swados essay The Myth of the Happy Worker
150 Joseph Eichler California tract homes
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
- 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
- 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
196 Toyota Taiichi Ohno
199 Kaizen
- 201 Toyota alternated models on the same line, more varied work and evened out worker demand
201 NUMMI, Toyota and GM
- 202 reduced assembly time from 30 to 20 hours, defects reduced by 20%
- 203 1982 first Honda factory in US in Marysville Ohio
203 1986 movie Gung Ho
- 205 Ford partners with Mazda, brings in Deming
205 Mastering the dynamics of innovation, James Utterback 1994 PSU
- 206 1980s, Dell shipped customized computers in 5 days
207 Rivethead, Ben Harper, 1991 PSU
212 CAD, International design teams, US -> Japan -> Europe -> US, 24 hour productivity
- 213 late 1940s, 280,000 manufacturing jobs in Detroit, in 2002, only 38,000, relocation elsewhere
- 215 Detroit population 1.5M in 1970, 0.7M in 2010 66,000 vacant lots, 40/137 square miles
- 215 After 40 years of growth, Japan stopped growing, the rest of the world and US booming, except Detroit
- 217 offshoring, de-industrialization
218 1982 The Deindustrialization of America
219 The Tsai family in Hong Kong, Globalization and Its Discontents, Stiglitz 2002.
- 220 10yo Chinese children working 14 h/d, 3 in a dormitory bed, less than a dollar per day
221 Mollie's job : a story of life and work on the global assembly line William Adler 2000
222 No logo : taking aim at the brand bullies Naomi Klein 2000
- 223 post-lean automobile plant 10 hour final assembly, half of 1990
- 224 Taiwan Foxconn, 1.2 million employees, some mainland
- 225 Apple 2012, 40K US employees, 700K foreign contractors
- 225 2009-11 Foxconn 14 suicides, 72 hours per week
- 228 lean production repeat movements for hours without stretch, relax, position change
- 228 Indiana Subaru plant, half of team with repetitive stress injuries
- 229 1998 GM Flint strike, US economy 1% smaller
- 232 overall employment in US and Europe grew in 1990s
- 234 2000 CEO pay rose 25% per year between 1995 and 2000
- question - what did the CEOs purchase with that money, and who worked for it?
- 234 2011 1000 volunteers produced 200,000 charity packages with assembly lines
- 237 1979 GM almost half of 1.1M manufacturing jobs, 2005 125K, 2012 65K
- 238 Intel still designs and manufactures mostly at 10 US sites
- 239 2011 GM sold 9.025M vehicles (NOT 9,025M oopsie), 2.55M in China
- 242 Ford Focus factories in Germany closely resemble US, 85% of parts identica;
- 243 body shop 500 robots make 4000 precise welds, high-skill high pay tool and die makers make and repair them
- 244 1930s paint dried with infrared, synthetic resin enamels enabled multiple colors
- 246 conveyor belts replaced by step-on/step-off moving floor sections
- 246 cars raised or lower to convenient working height
- 247 each car has "DNA sheet" listing options, today 500K variations
- 248 every component bar coded
- 250 Michigan Ave Focus plant 3K workers make 300K/y compared to 2K/y with 1912 methods
- 250 many different vehicles on a single line, workers do more than one job
- 251 labor is only 15% of direct cost of car
- 259 New emphasis on green factories
- 260 2000 Ford River Rouge with green roofs, reduced water runoff, improved insulation, water-permeable parking lots
- 260 Volkswagon Chattanooga "green city, green plant, green car
261 Cradle to Cradle William McDonough 2002
- 262 Shredders mix metals, materials degraded; recyclable design better, "technical metabolism"
- .. overview verbiage
- 267 finis: In 2013 it was time to reinvent both production and consumption and construct a greener assembly-line America.
