Talk:Fordism
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This article and some related ones (such as Taylorism) seem overly biased towards Thomas Hughes' views.
I was always told the Ford perfected the Assembly Line, but he didn't develop it. Ransom Eli Olds had a form of it when he was making cars, and forms of it were even present during the industrial revolution.
- Eli Whitney is popularly credited with interchangeable parts. Not all autos had this when Ford began production, though many did. Several of his employees invented the assembly line to the best of my knowledge (see Piquette Plant) -- this is the first reference to moving product through the process that I am aware of. Paulmeisel 01:13, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
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- According to Hobsbawm (Industry and Empire, Penguin, 1968, p.176), "The government enterprises working for the British Navy had, however, evolved perhaps the first working assembly-line in the famous biscuit-bakery at Deptford in the early nineteenth century. ... The very earliest experiments in continuous production lines go back to the ingenious Yankee technicians of the late eighteenth century, such as Oliver Evans (1755-1819), who constructed an entirely automatic flour-mill and invented the conveyor belt, though it was not untill the 1890s that the technique was seriously developed in the Chicago meat-packing industry and elsewhere, and not until the ealry 1900s that it reached maturity in Henry Ford's motor works." Just thought I'd share... bobanny 04:32, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
Are the authors of both Taylorism and Fordism one and the same?
This excerpt appears in both articles but under two different headings: Scientific management and the Soviet Union and Fordism and the Soviet Union.
Historian Thomas Hughes (Hughes 2004) has ... The combination of the Russian revolutionary sweep with American efficiency is the essence of Leninism. (Hughes 2004, 251).
Plagiarism (self or otherwise)?
Moved from article:
Fordism The term Fordism is often described as the system in which assembly line mass production fed the ultra hungry demands of a consumption world. Fordism is much more than just a blueprint for mass production however. Fordism both revolutionized how products would be made and economies function, as well as help fight many of America’s threats on many different fronts. When people think about mass production and mass consumption economies they often think of the man Henry ford. Up until the industrial revolution the economy had really been agriculturally based. The introduction of machines changed all that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Henry Ford did not invent these new machines but he did exploit them better than anybody else. Until of course everyone started copying Fords blueprint for success. Fordism created an economic market of mass production instead of the previous craft production. This transition gave rise to the giant organizations built by minute divisions of labor and functional specialization (Thompson). Fords main triumph in the world of new ideas was the assembly line although he did barrow the idea from a slaughter house in Cincinnati. The assembly line allowed the company to standardize every single product and labor process there was. All of the parts and components were the same for every car on that assembly line as well as the way they were put together. The real engine behind the assembly line however was not the machines but rather the people working on the assembly line. Men who worked on the assembly line did one job the whole day. It was a repetitive task that was not very glamorous which we will talk more about later. This did allow for productivity to go through the roof. The Ford Model-T Plant in Highland Park, Michigan was the first plant to implement the moving assembly line in 1914. The effects increased labor productivity by ten times. The new productivity was passed along to the consumer in lower prices for a new automobile. In 1910 the price of a car was $780 which could only be afforded by the rich and very well off. Thanks to Fordism however the price for a new automobile went down to $360 by 1914 (Thompson). This was one of Henry Ford’s biggest dreams, to manufacture a car that the common man could afford to buy. Another key to success was Fords hands on, “only us” approach. The Ford Company brought nothing in from the outside including raw materials which they produced. The company was also a multilayered hierarchy in which every single detail and reason to do something came down from the top. This vertical integration required a very large amount of middle management, specialists, and everyday assembly line workers. This top down direct supervision made it much simpler to get the raw materials and components through the production process. This also allowed Henry Ford to have total control of everything. That was especially important to a man who did not necessarily trust accounting and financial services of the time (Baca). The one word that best describes the fordism style of mass production would be control. Every single job and function had to be simplified as much as possible. If you tightened bolts on the assembly line that was all you did all day every day. The workers were pretty much just as simple as the machines they were running. This type of process meant there had to be huge numbers of assembly line workers as well as many middle management and staff specialists to help coordinate those below them. The middle managers were really the ones who set strategies by their evaluation of data and allocation of resources on the assemble line. They just passed their opinions up the chain of command were it got the final approval. To the average observer the task of being an assembly line worker sounds relatively easy. After all how hard is it to do just one single job over and over again? In actuality however this was one of the hardest jobs to perform at that time. The physical demands that had to be met by an assembly line worker in a mass production factory were very high. More important than the physical demands however were the levels of concentration that each employee had to have. Since the assembly line never stopped (literally non-stop 24 hours a day and seven days a week.) the worker could not afford to miss a beat. This would be incredible hard to do due to the fact that the job was so boring. A long repetitiveness will make even the most diligent worker bored out of his mind after a while. Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci once described the job of an assembly line worker as “monotonous, degrading, and life draining work process” (Rupert). It should be no surprise to learn then that there was an incredibly high turnover rate in the labor force. An almost 400% turnover rate at the end of 1913 (Thompson). To deal with this incredibly high turnover rate, Ford and many other mass producers ended up increasing the wages of its employees. Eventually the job of an assembly line worker was one of the highest paying labor jobs in the world. Many of the mass production company employees formed unions that guaranteed a respectable living wage. The employees eventually received super competitive wages through their unions that were unseen in the early 1900’s. These incredibly high wages for unskilled workers all depended on their political power however. After World War 2 the blue collar assembly line worker was the biggest group in every major developed nation. Labor unions were so organized and driven that they were a political force all on their own. This is demonstrated by all of the policy and laws that were written at the time. Almost all which were geared to helping protect the unskilled labor worker. Most of these laws are still around to day in the form of the welfare state. Any time you hear a politician talk about social security, unemployment benefits, workers compensation, he is referring to things that came out of what the mass production labor force fought for in the 1950’s (Baca). This is a great example of how something as simple as assemble line mass production can lead to debate and dramatic changes in both social and political landscapes not just in America but other countries as well. You could say that it’s the law of unintended consequences. Henry Ford may have indeed invented the concept of Fordism but he did not perfect it. That distinction goes to the people at Fords rival, General Motors. General Motors did use assembly line mass production but they did not see the use in having top management having to micromanage every single detail like Ford did. Instead General Motors created a decentralized administrative control force that made each arm of GM whether it is Chevrolet or Buick or any other, its own product market. The top executives at General Motors did not have to micromanage things because they just put the responsibility into the hands of the division managers (Thompson). If sales were down or any other problem was happening at a division the executives would simply get a new division manager to run things. If things went especially well at a certain division the managers would usually be promoted to bigger positions. This kind of reward based system usually ensured that there would always be dedicated, hard working managers. We said earlier that the concept of Fordism helped America on many different fronts. We have already talked about some of the social and economic victories that Fordism helped define and win. Fordism and mass production must also be considered when talking about the wars America has fought and its role in shaping U.S. foreign policy. When America was forced into WW1 and WW2 the fact that we could mass produce the tools we needed in so fast a way is a main reason for our success. Keep in mind however that Germany also re-armed using the same blueprint invented by Henry Ford. However America stood alone in its ability to produce arms, jeeps, tanks and anything else the war effort needed. In many factories the products that were originally made were substituted for whatever the war effort called for. The government would simply tell Ford or GM to stop making cars and start making jeeps. The infrastructure of American factories and assembly lines contributed greatly to our victories in those wars. Mass production was also the main catalyst in bringing the countries of Europe and Japan out of the ruble of post WW2. They were also important during the Cold War. The success of the unskilled laborer in receiving super competitive wages was an important point in showing the advantages of capitalism over communism (Rupert). The concept of Fordism is greatly diminished in today’s world. It still exists somewhat in the automotive business but not many other places. It has been replaced by the more profitable Just-In-Time approach to manufacturing. One must appreciate however the long-lasting effects of assembly line mass production and the impact it has had on the rest of the world.
[edit] Questionable statement
Nowhere else have I seen "higher wages" as an advantage of Fordism. The whole point was to drive wages DOWN by making employees replaceable cogs in a machine. You can see that Ford had, by far, the highest turnover in the auto industry if you research it. In addition, the "generous" $5/day wage was highly restricted in its application. If nobody objects I would like to remove the references to raising wages which is definitively NOT a part of Fordism. Davert (talk) 15:12, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit] NPOV?
The entire post-Fordist section is questionable, partly because it makes no mention of desire of customers for customized or "different" vehicles starting immediately after WWII - a recognized trend in the auto industry -- and because it makes a lot of interesting assumptions about why Fordism failed in the United States. Alternatives such as Volvo's switch from Fordist production to team-based production in the 1960s/70s and the reasons for its success are ignored. Union power before the 1960s is ignored even though the CIO came to power long before then. There is no factual support for any of this armchair theorizing. Davert (talk) 14:01, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
