Amazing Entrepreneurs & Business People by Katerina Mestheneou

Author:Katerina Mestheneou [Mestheneou, Katerina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007557080
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

The Model T car

In 1907, I bought 60 acres of land in a place called Highland Park, just outside Detroit, where I had a large factory built. I wanted it to be the best and most efficient car factory that had ever been made and I employed both architects and company engineers to make sure we got the design right. The main architect was a man called Albert Kahn, who later became known as one of the best industrial architects. Building the plant took two years because I wanted to use the profits we were making for the building costs and not to borrow money. Highland Park in the USA opened on 1st January 1910 and then the following year, production started in Britain.

For several years we had been looking at ways to rearrange the men and the machinery to move away from the old slow methods of production. By 1913, we had started using assembly line production. This meant that the workers stayed in one place and the car was moved along on a moving platform. Each worker completed a small task and then the car moved on to the next person. The production time of each car was reduced from 14 hours to 90 minutes. I felt we had achieved something amazing and at the same time we had created a great deal of new employment in the Detroit area.

However, the new way of working was boring and not very satisfying for the workers and they soon started to complain. In fact, many of them left. There was work for 14,000 men but in one year we had 53,000 workers passing through Highland Park. I realized I had to do something to make the job more attractive. In 1914, I introduced the five-dollars-a-day wage. This was about twice the average paid elsewhere, but paying more worked and employees now wanted to work at the Ford Motor Company.

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