Automobile Production And Ford Essay Research Paper — страница 2

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increase in daily wages made it possible for more people to buy cars (Iacocca, 1998). Ford and his investors formed the Ford Motor Company in 1901. The first Model A was sold within a month of the company being established. Ten workmen functioning out of a converted wagon factory in Detroit built the car. During the next 15 months, 1,700 Model A’s were sold. He kept improving the car, using the letters of the alphabet for each new design. The first Model T came out of the factory in 1908; it cost $850 and 10,660 cars were sold that first year. The Model T had a top speed of 45 miles per hour and it averaged 25 miles to the gallon. It had a 20 horsepower engine, side-valves, four cylinders, and 18-inch wheels with cotton cord tires. There was no gas gauge; instead, the driver

had to check the gas level by lowering a wooden stick into the gas tank. Window wipers were hand operated, it had a very rough suspension and the sides of the car were open. The only color available was black. Still, even with what today’s driver would consider a complete lack of amenities, the model T was a perfect car for the time. The roads were bad and the population lived mostly in rural areas where there were very few repair facilities. The Model T was so well engineered and so simple to repair that if anything went wrong, it took only a screwdriver to fix it. The model T was also a remarkably versatile vehicle. Farmers could buy tractor wheels for it that replaced the rear axle wheels. The model T thus became a tractor that the farmer could use to haul, plow, plant and

harvest. They could even use the rear axle to power mobile sawmills, electric generators, water pumps and feed grinders. This made the model T very attractive to buyers and helped to influence the rapid increase in demand for the vehicle. The demand was high for the car but production was slow because each car was individually handmade. Ford knew that if he were going to satisfy the demand he would have to speed up production. This demand led Ford to investigate conveyor belts and how he could use them to increase production and lower costs. Ford built an automatic conveyor belt and organized teams that added parts to each Model T as it moved down the line. By 1914, his Highland Park plant was churning out a car every 93 minutes (Iacocca, 1998). The chassis assembly alone was cut

from 12 hours to one hour and 33 minutes, a dramatic time saver for the assemblers. Ford spent about $3,500 to build the conveyor belt that would move the cars down an assembly line. This was a significant change; rather than the workers moving from one car assembly to the next, the car moved saving time and money. The components needed were funneled to the teams so the workers didn’t even have to waste time moving to parts bins for what they needed (Iacocca, 1998). In 1915, mass production had allowed Ford to sell its millionth car (Crews, 1998). By 1927, the year production ended for the Model T, more than 15 million cars had been sold. That was half of the world’s output of cars. Ford had designed a car that was easy to manufacture and one that could be owned by a large

number of people (Iacocca, 1998). Ford’s vision not only created a middle class in this country, but he also fostered urbanization and rising wages. Consider these demographics: when Ford left his own family farm at the age of 16 and walked eight miles to get his first job in a Detroit machine shop, only two out of eight Americans lived in cities. An overwhelming majority of people lived on farms in rural areas. One of the reasons for the increase was the Model T. People flocked to Detroit to obtain jobs in Ford’s factories. Once employed, they could afford to purchase a car that afforded them great mobility. After the war, even more people moved to urban areas for jobs and more cars were sold (Iacocca, 1998). Ford helped to supplement and greatly increase the employment of

the economy. Ford did not invent mass production through assembly lines and moving conveyor belts; he just integrated the concept with building automobiles. It all might not have happened if it had not been for the ideas of Alfred P. Sloan, who established General Motors. Sloan understood how to decentralize and manage a large manufacturing company by the late 1800s with many marine engine builders who were familiar with how internal combustion engines worked. Hundreds of entrepreneurs who wanted to build cars used this expertise, but it did not quite work. Even though these people increased their production output, their costs did not drop as significantly as did Ford’s costs. Their crude, craft-based production techniques left each automobile costing the same amount no matter