Inventors: Henry Ford

(born July 30, 1863, Wayne county, Mich., U.S.—died April 7, 1947, Dearborn, Mich.) U.S. industrialist and pioneer automobile manufacturer. Ford worked his way up from a machinist’s apprentice (at age 15) to the post of chief engineer at the Edison Company in Detroit. He built his first experimental car in 1896. In 1903, with several partners, he formed the Ford Motor Company. In 1908 he designed the Model T; demand became so great that Ford developed new mass-production methods, including the first moving assembly line in 1913. He developed the Model A in 1928 to replace the Model T, and in 1932 he introduced the V-8 engine. He observed an eight-hour workday and paid his workers far above the average, holding that well-paid labourers become the consumers that industrialists require, but strenuously opposed labour unions. As the first to make car ownership affordable to large numbers of Americans, he exerted a vast and permanent influence on American life.

An American success story unfolds with newsreels and Ford family home movies, capturing the man who changed the world with the invention of the gas-driven buggy.

An absorbing life story of a farm boy who rose from obscurity to become the most influential American innovator of the 20th century, Henry Ford offers an incisive look at the birth of the American auto industry with its long history of struggles between labor and management, and a thought-provoking reminder of how Ford's automobile forever changed the way we work, where we live, and our ideas about individuality, freedom, and possibility.

Ford's Assembly Line at Highland Park is one of the most influential conceptualisations of a production system. New data reveal Ford's operations were adaptable to strongly increasing and highly variable demand. These analyses show Ford's assembly line was used differently than modern ones and their production systems were more flexible than previously recognised. Assembly line balancing theory largely ignores earlier practice. It will be shown that Ford used multiple lines flexibly to cope with large monthly variations in sales. Although a line may be optimised to yield the lowest cost production, systems composed of several parallel lines may yield low cost production along with output and product flexibility. Recent research on multiple parallel lines has focused on cost effectiveness without appreciating the flexibility such systems may allow. Given the current strategic importance of flexibility, it should be included in such analyses as an explicit objective.

Other than the personal computer, the Model T may be the single most important technology artifact of the 20th century. After surveying the history of automobiles, this lecture introduces you to Henry Ford and tells the story of the Model T - the car that changed the way Americans thought about travel and launched a consumer revolution.

The most famous recreational vehicle (RV) enthusiasts were automaker Henry Ford, inventor Thomas Edison, tiremaker Haarvey Firestone and naturalist John Burroughs. The group of four spent the summers between 1916-20 RVing through the countryside, always without the company of their families. Their RV trip during the summer of 1920 became their last because Burroughs died in 1921. The remaining RVers continued the tradition, but this time with their families.

Ford's Assembly Line at Highland Park is one of the most influential conceptualisations of a production system. New data reveal Ford's operations were adaptable to strongly increasing and highly variable demand. These analyses show Ford's assembly line was used differently than modern ones and their production systems were more flexible than previously recognised. Assembly line balancing theory largely ignores earlier practice. It will be shown that Ford used multiple lines flexibly to cope with large monthly variations in sales. Although a line may be optimised to yield the lowest cost production, systems composed of several parallel lines may yield low cost production along with output and product flexibility. Recent research on multiple parallel lines has focused on cost effectiveness without appreciating the flexibility such systems may allow. Given the current strategic importance of flexibility, it should be included in such analyses as an explicit objective.