History & Humanities 147 The vehicle is considered one of the first mass production cars. HENRY FORD: THE ASSEMBLY LINE The history of modern lean production truly begins with American Henry Ford (1863 -1947) and his revolutionary automobile manufacturing company in the early 20th century: founder of Ford Motor Company, he was the chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. Ford s target and strategy At the Ford plant in Highland Park, Michigan, US, the famous Model T was manufactured, starting in 1908. Henry Ford wanted his car to be affordable by middle-class Americans, simple to operate and durable. His focus was not on organisational structure, but on making the best product possible. To do so, he introduced methods that eliminated waste and helped employees work more efficiently: he did not want people to work harder, he wanted people, and his company as a whole, to work smarter. He had an admirable ability to see the flow associated with a process , a flow which started with raw materials and ended with a customer driving away in a new car. Ford s Innovations He introduced new manufacturing techniques from 1913 on, among which: Moving assembly line: the use of the moving assembly line allowed work to be taken to workers rather than having workers moving to and around the vehicle; Standardisation: the production line did not provide for variation or deviation from the best practice; the employee who performed an action did so the same way, every day, once Ford had determined the best way to do it; Wasted movement: Ford s factories were designed so that workers could accomplish their given tasks with the fewest steps and movements; Just-in-time manufacturing: Ford knew the importance of not creating large amounts of inventory and managed his supply chain to have enough materials on-hand to manufacture his cars based on demand; High wages: in 1914, Ford began paying his employees $5 a day, doubling the wages offered by other manufacturers; he also cut the workday from nine to eight hours in order to convert the factory to a threeshift workday; Customer service: among other areas that served the customer, Ford improved the delivery service so that cars consistently arrived on time as scheduled to the customer. flow: flusso inventory: scorte in magazzino lean production: produzione snella A disadvantage While Ford created techniques that led to innovative methodologies, the one area he did not account for was variation: his processes did not provide variety. Model T was not only limited to one colour, it was also limited to one specification: all Model T chassis were essentially identical up through to the end of production in 1926. 318 CROss-CURRICULAR TOPICs MechPower.indb 318 30/01/24 17:10