By:
Aaron Neal
In 1913 Henry
Ford revolutionized the automobile industry when he started the first assembly
line for the Model T. In the nineteenth
century, car were made one by one as an individual product. Ford took the production and placed it on a
moving conveyor belt where parts were assembled at fixed work stations along
the belt. This allowed workers at each
station to only assemble one part of the car as it moved down the line. This continuous flow of production reduced
the time it took to assemble a car from twelve hours down to two and a
half. As the Ford Company continued to
grow, the idea of mass-production grew as well.
Other industries saw the benefit of assembly line production and the
mass quantities that it brought with it.
This mindset of specialization, fragmentation of production, and the
overall assembly line concept became known as Fordism. Mass production soon found itself at the core
of every manufacturing process ranging from not just the automobile industry,
but in fields such as aviation and ship building. As these industries adopted the Fordism
philosophy, they grew from it and created their own improved manufacturing
models. In each of these industries –
automobile, aviation, and ship building – one can see the change in production
methods over the course of the twentieth century. Originally each product was made singularly,
but then an assembly line method was introduced and production increase. Now each of these fields use a modular or
non-linear approach to production. This
Post-Fordism way of thinking takes the assembly line and breaks it down into
multiple sub-assemblies that can be produced concurrently. Non-linear production drastically can shorten
the amount of time it takes to manufacture a product, which is apparent in the
success these industries have using a modular approach to production. What lessons can the building industry –
which still creates buildings singularly – pull from these other manufacturing
industries?
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