Ford And The Vehicle Manufacturing Revolution

Feb 27
08:07

2012

Antoinette Ayana

Antoinette Ayana

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How did the innovations put into practice by Ford Motor Company change the world of vehicle manufacturing forever?

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The city of Detroit is known for many things and one of these things is the auto industry. There are many auto manufacturers in the world and three of them have their headquarters in this area. One of these companies is Ford Motor Company.

Based on sales numbers in 2010,Ford And The Vehicle Manufacturing Revolution Articles Ford is the second-largest auto manufacturer in the United States and the fifth in the European market. It is also a highly ranked company on the Fortune 500 list. The JD Power and Associates has awarded the automaker more quality awards than any other U.S. automaker and has many of its vehicles rated near the top of their lists.

The automaker has a rich history that dates back to 1903. Henry Ford's first attempt at opening a manufacturing plant in November 1901 failed and later became the Cadillac Motor Company. He later received 28,000 dollars from investors and was able to open the new plant On Mack Avenue in downtown where a few men were able to work and put out several cars a day, making them very expensive and only available for the wealthy.

Henry Ford is known for perfecting the assembly line to help make the cars affordable to the every day person. If he was going to make this possible, he needed a new larger location, so he moved the plant to the new Highland Park Plant where he introduced to the production world the assembly line so that cars could be made affordably for he masses. This made the assembly time decrease from over 12 hours to just over an hour and a half.

He also thought it would be better for the company if they manufactured all the parts themselves as well, so the leadership of the company decided to move the main manufacturing to River Rouge where they incorporated a coal plant, steel plant, and larger spaces for the assembly line, making it the largest and most innovative automobile manufacturing plant in the world. These changes were hard on the employees however and led to a higher turnover rate, therefore, higher costs. This caused Mr. Ford to introduce a higher wage, a shorter workday, and a shorter work week. This led to better hiring practices so that he hired only the best workers and there was no longer an employee shortage.

Now, Ford Motor Company is a world leader in vehicle manufacturing, thanks to some of the innovative practices that its founder put into practice, which are still being used and developed today.