On this day in 1913, 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.
Ford’s Model T, introduced in 1908, was simple, sturdy and relatively inexpensive – but not inexpensive enough for Ford, who was determined to build “motor car[s] for the great multitude.” (“When I’m through,” he said, “about everybody will have one.”) To lower the price of his cars, Ford figured, he would just have to find a way to build them more efficiently.
The most significant piece of Ford’s efficiency crusade was the assembly line. Inspired by the continuous-flow production methods used by flour mills, breweries, canneries and industrial bakeries, along with the disassembly of animal carcasses in Chicago’s meat-packing plants, Ford installed moving lines for bits and pieces of the manufacturing process: For instance, workers built motors and transmissions on rope-and-pulleypowered conveyor belts. In December 1913, he unveiled the pièce de résistance: the moving-chassis assembly line.
You can find more details about Ford’s assembly line here.
