HENRY FORD

The Model T

AND THE

Moving Assembly Line

By Emily Robinson

Henry Ford was the founder of the Ford motor, and invented the moving

assembly line. He then used the assembly line to manufacture cars. Over his years

running his business he earned a great amount of money, and was worth 188.1 billion

as of 2008. Henry Ford’s inventions impacted the people of the U.S, his workers, and he

even impacted other manufacturing companies to come.

When Henry Ford started the Ford Motor Company in 1903, he wanted to “build

a car for the great multitude.” Until he began making cars, cars were very expensive,

and only for the wealthy. In 1906 Henry Ford started to plan the Model T. He went to a

race track and observed the wreckage from one of the French race cars. He learned

that these cars were made of a different type of steel than all of the cars that were

currently being made in the United States. These cars were made of an vanadium alloy.

This alloy was almost three times stronger than the alloy that was used in the cars in

America. Henry Ford ran into a problem though. No one in America knew how to make

this type of alloy, so he set up a steel mill to produce this new alloy. In 1908 he

introduced the Model T for $950. In 1909 the price of the car was $825. In the first year

of production Henry Ford sold 10,000 Model T’s. This was more than any other

automobile model before.Eventually, the price dipped down to as low as $280. Almost

15,500,000 Model T’s were sold in the United States.

Henry Ford also revolutionized manufacturing. He wanted to find a more efficient

way to make cars, so that they could continue to lower the price. He went and observed

they things that other companies were doing at the time. He came up with four different

principles to make manufacturing more efficient. These principles were interchangeable

parts, continuous flow, division of labor, and reducing wasted effort. To make the parts

interchangeable he improved the cutting tools and some of the other machinery. In late

1913 he started using the assembly line in his manufacturing. He broke down the

process of making the Model T into 84 individual steps. This allowed the factory workers

to be able to do one thing well instead of having to be able to make an entire car. This

process was much faster, and was more efficient. It decreased production time by almost

13%. It only took 93 minutes to make a chassis with the assembly line whereas before it

took 728 minutes.

Henry Ford also impacted his employees. When he made the parts of his

vehicles interchangeable he didn’t need the high skilled workers that made all of the

parts by hand. He was able to hire lower skilled workers, who were not able to find jobs

as easily elsewhere. Seeing how they were able to make cars so much faster, he was

able to pay his employees even more. The minimum wage for his employees went from

$2.34 an hour to $5 an hour. This was twice as much as what most manufacturing

companies paid their employee. Seeing how he paid his employees so much more they

were also able to buy cars. This was good for Henry Ford, because his employees were

buying Model T’s. The amount of hours his employees had to work also decreased.

They went from working nine hours a day to eight hours a day.

Henry Ford changed the way that cars were manufactured and sold. He changed

the way that companies would manufacture their products. He had a huge impact on the

motor industry, industries to come that would use the assembly line, and his employees.

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