Henry Ford

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The Success of a Man To say that Henry Ford dilly-dallied around before finally establishing a serious car company would be invalid. The 40 year old man had been acquiring valuable knowledge regarding business, engines, management, and most importantly cars. Now it was time to take a leap of faith. In 1903 the Ford Motor Company came to be. Ford, along with other investors including John and Horace Dodge raised $28,000 and in the first 15 months produced 1700 Model A cars. These cars were known for their reliability, yet were still too expensive for the average American. Over the next five years Ford and his engineers produced models with the letters B through S, the most successful of which was the Model N (priced at $500) , and the least successful was the Model K (priced at $2500). It was obvious from the Model N that the key to the companies success lay in inexpensive cars for a mass market. The answer that Ford and the American consumer were looking for was the Model T. The Model T, a small, sturdy four-cylinder car with an attractive design and a top speed of 45 mph, hit the market in 1908. It’s success came from it’s attractive price, at $850, and more than 10,000 were sold in the first year alone. It was easy to operate, maintain, handle on rough roads, and immediately became a success. Along with success came expansion, and in 1910 he established another assembly plant in Highland Park, Michigan. Through interchangeable parts, standard manufacturing, and a division labor, the demand greatly increased for the Model T. It was at this time in 1913 that Ford introduced the assembly line and forever changed our economy, our industry, and our culture. Ford’s concept of an assembly line sprang from the thought that a car could be produced much quicker if each person did one, single task. He applied this in his Highland Park plant, and cut down production time of one Model T to a fraction on the time. The carefully timed pace of a conveyer belt moving the parts along further speeded the process. With these new tactics, a factory could produce 40%-60% more cars per month. By late 1913 he had established assembly plants in Canada, Europe, Australia, South America, and Japan. At this point, the Ford Motor Company was the largest manufacturer of cars in the world.

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