The Insider's Guide to Culture Change by Siobhan McHale

Author:Siobhan McHale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harpercollins Leadership
Published: 2019-12-16T16:00:00+00:00

In 1903, Henry started the Ford Motor Company with $28,000 in cash collected from twelve investors. During the early days of production in his Highland Park factory, Ford built cars, one at a time, just like everybody else. Groups of two or three men gathered around the chassis as it sat on the ground, running off occasionally to acquire needed parts. This method produced just a few cars a day.

Wishing to speed production, Ford began experimenting with the process, first transferring the chassis to benches where assemblers could more easily work on the vehicles. Then he moved the benches from team to team, initiating the idea of specialists in various steps of the process. That didn’t satisfy Ford. How could he speed it up? Henry decided to make the larger parts of the chassis himself with new machines, allowing workers to put them in place much faster. Still, it took much too long to produce the final product. Then Ford made one of the most brilliant breakthroughs in business history.

In his Highland Park factory, Ford placed workers at fixed stations where they could perform their assigned tasks while a strong rope pulled the chassis along the line. It may seem mundane now, but the assembly line revolutionized manufacturing in every industry from toys to space stations. The assembly line did not just make it possible to manufacture gizmos much faster; it created a whole new type of workplace culture.

Before the advent of the assembly line, factory employees worked in a loose-knit culture where each worker served as a sort of jack-of-all-trades, performing whatever task that came their way—bolting on a wheel for a few minutes, then installing a window the next. The job may not have inspired them to do excellent work, but at least it offered a certain amount of variety. Now, standing at the wheel attachment or glass installation station all day long, performing a single task over and over and over again, made the work almost robotic. (Ironically, robots would, in fact, one day replace many of the humans who worked on assembly lines.)

The assembly-line technique transformed the American national culture. Decreased costs of production, passed on to the consumer, afforded the average American middle-class family a swift means of transportation. At the same time, it transformed workplace culture with higher wages for repetitive and monotonous work. In 1908, a Ford Model T sold for around $825; by 1912, the price had fallen to around $575 (comparable to a reduction of $15,000 in today’s dollars); and by 1914, an assembly-line worker could buy a Model T with four months’ pay.

Ford’s complex safety procedures, such as assigning workers to specific locations instead of allowing them to roam about the shop floor, dramatically reduced the rate of injury. The combination of high wages and high efficiency, dubbed “Fordism,” became the norm in industries around the world. Workers took pride in their jobs, brought home hefty paychecks, and remained deeply loyal to their employer. Their mental maps defined a new role for workers and a new pattern of relating in the world of manufacturing (Figure 6.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.