Today the difference lies with most parts going onto the vehicle are not made through the manufacturing plant. By using assembly line sequencing , manufacturers eliminate their standing inventory.
Therefore, receiving parts as needed reduces production costs, making vehicles more affordable for the end-line consumer. Platform sharing is now a common part of the production process. Manufacturing car parts usable by several manufacturers reduces cost and simplifies production. Meanwhile, eliminating lead time to produce physical prototypes and allows validation of new assembly processes.
Assembly requiring repetitive movement no longer requires human operators. As a result, completed by a robot. On December 1, , Henry Ford installs the first moving assembly line for the mass production of an entire automobile.
His innovation reduced the time it took to build a car from more than 12 hours to one hour and 33 minutes. Later, the streamlining process grew more sophisticated. He also hired motion-study expert Frederick Taylor to make those jobs even more efficient. Meanwhile, he built machines that could stamp out parts automatically and much more quickly than even the fastest human worker could. In February , he added a mechanized belt that chugged along at a speed of six feet per minute.
As the pace accelerated, Ford produced more and more cars, and on June 4, , the millionth Model T rolled off the Highland Park assembly line.
Though the Model T did not last much longer—by the middle of the s, customers wanted a car that was inexpensive and had all the bells and whistles that the Model T scorned—it had ushered in the era of the automobile for everyone. In , Charles Kettering, a young Ohio engineer and auto hobbyist, found a better way—a starting system that combined a generator, storage battery, and electric motor. It debuted in the Cadillac the following year and spread rapidly from there.
Even an innovation as useful as the self-starter could meet resistance, however. Henry Ford refused to make Kettering's invention standard in the Model T until , although he offered it as an option before that. Sometimes buyers were the ones who balked at novelty. For example, the first truly streamlined car—the Chrysler Airflow, designed with the help of aeronautical engineers and wind tunnel testing—was a dud in the marketplace because of its unconventional styling.
Power steering, patented in the late s by Francis Davis, chief engineer of the Pierce-Arrow Motor Car Company, didn't find its way into passenger cars until But hesitantly accepted or not, major improvements in the automobile would keep coming as the decades passed.
Although the Model T was the ninth automobile model Ford created, it would be the first model which would achieve wide popularity. Henry Ford had a goal of making automobiles for the multitudes. The Model T was his answer to that dream; he wanted them to be both sturdy and cheap. By the end of production, however, the cars would be available in a wide variety of colors and with a wide variety of custom bodies.
That was cheap, but still not cheap enough for the masses. Ford needed to find a way to cut down the price even further. In , with the aim of increasing manufacturing capacity for the Model T, Ford built a new plant in Highland Park, Michigan.
He created a building that would be easily expanded as new methods of production were incorporated. Ford consulted with Frederick Taylor, creator of scientific management, to examine the most efficient modes of production.
Ford had previously observed the assembly line concept in slaughterhouses in the Midwest and was also inspired by the conveyor belt system that was common in many grain warehouses in that region.
He wished to incorporate these ideas into the information Taylor suggested to implement a new system in his own factory. One of the first innovations in production that Ford implemented was the installation of gravity slides that facilitated the movement of parts from one work area to the next. Within the next three years, additional innovative techniques were incorporated and, on December 1, , the first large-scale assembly line was officially in working order.
The moving assembly line appeared to the onlooker to be an endless contraption of chains and links that allowed Model T parts to swim through the sea of the assembly process. In total, the manufacturing of the car could be broken down into 84 steps. The key to the process, however, was having interchangeable parts.
Unlike other cars of the time, every Model T produced on Ford's line used the exact same valves, gas tanks, tires, etc. Parts were created in mass quantities and then brought directly to the workers who were trained to work at that specific assembly station.
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