Ford's Moving Assembly Line (1913): Mass Production Begins

Ford’s moving assembly line was introduced at the Highland Park plant near Detroit, Michigan, during 1913, and by 1 December that year complete Model T chassis were being built on it. Instead of workers moving around a stationary car, the car moved past workers who each did one small task. The time needed to assemble a chassis fell from about 12.5 hours to around 1.5 hours, and mass production soon spread to industries around the world.

Background: demand for the Model T

When the Ford Model T went on sale in October 1908, demand far outstripped supply. Cars were then put together by teams of skilled workers who built each vehicle in one place, fetching parts and fitting them by hand.

In 1910 Ford moved production to a new four-storey factory at Highland Park, designed by the architect Albert Kahn. It had large windows, electric power and machine tools arranged in the order in which parts were made. Ford’s managers kept rearranging the work to save time, but by 1912 even this efficient factory could not build enough cars. Ford’s decision in 1909 to concentrate on a single model, the Model T, made radical changes possible, because every machine and every worker could be devoted to making the same car in the same way.

Ideas behind the line

The moving assembly line drew on several older ideas:

• Interchangeable parts. Since the 19th century, American gun makers and other manufacturers had made identical parts that could be fitted without hand filing. Ford invested heavily in precise machine tools to achieve this.
• Continuous flow. Flour mills, breweries and canneries used conveyors to move materials through each stage of processing.
• Disassembly lines. In Chicago’s meatpacking plants, carcasses hung from overhead trolleys moved past workers who each made one cut. Ford’s engineers later cited them as an inspiration.
• Scientific management. Frederick Winslow Taylor and his followers studied work with stopwatches and broke it into simple, timed tasks. Ford’s managers used similar methods, though Ford himself did not credit Taylor.

How the line was built

The first experiment came on 1 April 1913 in the department that made flywheel magnetos, part of the Model T’s electrical system. Instead of one worker assembling a whole magneto, 29 workers stood along a waist-high line, each adding a few parts and sliding the unit on. The assembly time per magneto fell from about 20 minutes to about 13, and with later adjustments to about 5.

The method spread quickly to engines, transmissions and other components. In August 1913 the engineers began experimenting with chassis assembly, at first pulling a chassis along the floor with a rope and a winch while workers walked beside it. This alone roughly halved the time needed.

Over the following months the line was refined with powered chain drives, rails that set the chassis at a convenient height, and careful timing of each task. By 1 December 1913 the chassis line was running continuously, and in early 1914 Ford installed further chain-driven lines. Assembly time per chassis fell from about 12.5 hours to about 93 minutes.

The principle was simple: bring the work to the worker, not the worker to the work. Each task was broken down into simple steps that an unskilled worker could learn in a short time, and the speed of the line set the pace for everyone. Parts arrived on conveyors and slides from feeder lines at exactly the point where they were needed. Many of Ford’s workers were recent immigrants from southern and eastern Europe who spoke little English, and the simplicity of each job meant they could start work almost at once.

Key people

• Henry Ford set the goal of a cheap car for everyone and supported the experiments, though the practical work was done by his staff.
• Charles Sorensen, a production manager, took a leading role in the chassis line experiments and later in Ford’s River Rouge complex.
• Clarence Avery, a former teacher, worked out the timing and sequence of tasks.
• Peter Martin was superintendent of the Highland Park plant.
• James Couzens, Ford’s business manager, was closely involved in introducing the five-dollar day.

The five-dollar day

The new system was enormously productive, but the work was repetitive and exhausting. Many workers quit after a few weeks. In 1913 Ford’s labour turnover was very high, with the company needing to hire several times its workforce over the year to keep its lines staffed.

On 5 January 1914 Ford announced the “five-dollar day”. Eligible workers would receive a total of $5 for an eight-hour day, about double the usual rate in Detroit, made up of wages plus a share of profits. The plant moved to three eight-hour shifts. Thousands of job seekers queued outside the factory.

The higher pay came with conditions. To qualify, workers had to meet standards of personal and family life checked by the company’s Sociological Department, whose investigators visited employees’ homes. Women and young men were at first largely excluded. The policy greatly reduced turnover and absenteeism, and it helped make Ford workers customers for the cars they built.

Consequences

The results were dramatic. Ford produced around 170,000 Model Ts in 1912–1913 and more than 300,000 in 1914, and output kept rising. The price of a Model T touring car fell from $850 in 1908 to about $490 in 1914 and lower still in the 1920s.

The moving line was widely copied. Other carmakers adopted it, and the method spread to radios, refrigerators, aircraft and many other products. Ford opened assembly plants abroad, including at Trafford Park in Manchester and later at Dagenham, east of London. During the Second World War, assembly-line methods helped the United States produce tanks, ships and aircraft on an enormous scale.

There were human costs. Critics argued that the line reduced skilled workers to machines, and labour unions in the car industry grew powerful in the 1930s, after the Great Depression had cost many workers their jobs. Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 film Modern Times famously satirised life on the factory line. In Europe, the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci used the term “Fordism” for the new combination of mass production, high wages and mass consumption, and the word has been used by historians and economists ever since.

Myths and facts

• “Ford invented mass production.” Mass production built on a century of developments, from interchangeable parts to continuous-flow processing. Ford’s achievement was combining them on an unprecedented scale.
• “The whole factory changed overnight.” The line was developed step by step over about a year, through many experiments.
• “The five-dollar day was simple generosity.” It was largely a business decision to keep workers on the line, and it came with strict conditions.

Timeline

• 1910, 1 January: Ford begins production at the new Highland Park plant.
• 1913, 1 April: The first moving line is tested for flywheel magnetos.
• 1913, August: Engineers begin experiments with moving chassis assembly.
• 1913, 1 December: The moving chassis assembly line is in regular operation.
• 1914, 5 January: Ford announces the five-dollar, eight-hour day.
• 1914: Chassis assembly time falls to about 93 minutes.
• 1927, 26 May: The last of about 15 million American-built Model Ts is completed.

Why it matters

The moving assembly line made complex machines cheap enough for ordinary people to buy, and it created the modern factory. Like the water-powered Cromford Mill of the Industrial Revolution, Highland Park changed not only how goods were made but how millions of people worked and lived.