Henry FORD

Henry Ford was born in Dearborn, Michigan, USA in 1863. Since his childhood period he was really interested in machines. Owing to this interest and ambition, in 1891, Ford became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company, and after his promotion to Chief Engineer in 1893, he got enough time and money to give attention to his personal ideas about mass production. After a period of time with some experiments and founding of Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford realized he'd need a more efficient way to mass produce cars in order to lower the price. He looked at other industries and found four principles that would further their goal: interchangeable parts, continuous flow, division of labor, and reducing wasted effort. Ford put these principles into play gradually over five years, fine-tuning and testing as he went along. In 1913, they came together in the first moving assembly line ever used for large-scale manufacturing. Ford produced cars at a record-breaking rate. As with most great enterprises, Ford Motor Company's beginnings were modest. The company had anxious moments in its infancy. In 1907, Henry Ford announced his goal for the Ford Motor Company: to create "a motor car for the great multitude." At that time, automobiles were expensive, custom-made machines. Ford's engineers took the first step towards this goal by designing the Model T, a simple, sturdy car, offering no factory options not even a choice of color. The Model T, first produced in 1908, kept the same design until the last one, number 15,000,000, rolled off the line in 1927. The processes that he implemented come from Taylor’s studies such as time and motion which is also developed by Gilbreths. And by the persistence of one great idea, Ford’s affordable automobile transformed America into the industrial era. The power of one idea can definitely change the world.

References:

http://www.hfmgv.org/exhibits/hf/

http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/ford.htm

http://www.usdreams.com/Ford18.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford