Production Lines Increased Efficiency and Lowered Prices

The first Model T Ford car sold for $950.00 in October, 1908. Four years later the price dropped to $575.00. By the end of the Model T’s 19 year run the car sold for $490.

Henry Ford

Mass production, a manufacturing technique from the Industrial Revolution, made the Model T less expensive to build.  Laborers worked on a particular part of the car, installing interchangeable parts.  As the cost of production dropped, so did the selling price and the reduced selling price increased sales. Using this method, Henry Ford’s profit per car was less, but the increased volume of sales made his company the biggest car manufacturer in the world. Ford’s competitors had to copy his manufacturing techniques to keep their companies in business.

The Industrial Revolution ran from approximately 1760 until 1840 in England and the United States. An agrarian society gave way to people living and working inside cities. Processes of making things on farms and using hand tools were replaced by manufacturing inside factories where workers used special-purpose machinery to produce products. The idea of a product being assembled by one person was replaced with the efficient method of mass production.   

Four important parts of mass production consist of interchangeable parts, continuous flow, division of labor and eliminating wasted effort. Henry Ford studied successful manufacturers who made fortunes during the Industrial Revolution and applied these techniques in his car company.

Eli Whitney

A mass production pioneer was Eli Terry who owned a clock manufacturing business in Connecticut. By 1800, Terry’s company produced 20 clocks a day using the interchangeable-parts technique on a short assembly line.

Eli Terry

Eli Whitney, the man credited with inventing a workable cotton gin, was manufacturing firearms in 1798. He also used interchangeable parts with an assembly line of workers to build muskets, rifles and handguns.

Samuel Colt, another firearms manufacturer, used interchangeable parts that were strategically placed on long tables. Each worker completed a specific stage of assembling a firearm. Colt began his company in 1855.

Colt Revolvers

Historians credit Henry Ford for studying the manufacturing pioneers Terry, Whitney and Colt and using their knowledge to help his company. Ford was known as a delegator who hired people who were experts in their fields. He then used their knowledge to improve his car company.

One critical tweak Ford added to his car assembly was to use a moving belt that traveled at six feet per minute. Ford, or probably one of his engineers, got the idea of a moving assembly belt from a Chicago meat packing company.

Model T Assembly Line

The car assembly line was divided into 84 steps. Each worker accomplished one of the steps as the partially assembled car moved past them on the belt. Ford hired efficiency experts who studied the motions of the workers as the parts were used. The laborers were instructed how to install each part with the least amount of effort and movement. That’s how the number of cars produced increased and the price went down.

Ford manufactured a car that was affordable to average workers. He accomplished this by using business principles established nearly 50 years prior. He added a moving assembly line that became the standard feature in every mass produced product. In 1908 a Model T was built every 12 hours. After Ford modernized his assembly line with a moving belt, the time to build one car was reduced to two and one half hours. The last Model T was number 15,000,000. The Model A, an improved version, replaced the Model T.

The system of a moving assembly line dominates car manufacturing today. Recent changes include the use of automated tools or robots that do much of the precision work such as spot welding. 

Further, modern car companies use a parts delivery system called just-in-time or last-minute delivery. Outside manufactures deliver their required parts as they are needed. This eliminates the expense of stockpiling and storing parts ahead of time.

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