Ford Motor Company
Uploaded by Gotskillz on Apr 17, 2005
The Ford Motor Company (often referred to simply as Ford; sometimes nicknamed Ford's or FoMoCo, is an automobile maker founded by Henry Ford in Detroit, Michigan, and incorporated on June 16, 1903.
Ford radically reformed the methods for large-scale manufacturing of cars, and large-scale management of an industrial workforce. Ford implemented the ideas of Eli Whitney, who developed the first assembly line using interchangeable parts, which made it possible to put the cars together at a much lower cost and with greater reliability and repeatability.
Ford was launched from a converted wagon factory, with $28,000 cash from 12 investors. During its early years, the company produced just a few cars a day at the Ford factory on Mack Avenue in Detroit. Groups of two or three men worked on each car from components made to order by other companies.
In 1908, the Ford company released the Ford Model T. The first Model T's were built at the Piquette Plant. The company was forced to move production to the much larger Highland Park Plant to keep up with the demand for the Model T, and by 1913 had developed all of the basic techniques of the assembly line and mass production. Ford introduced the world's first moving assembly line on December 1 that year, which reduced chassis assembly time from 12½ hours in October to 2 hours, 40 minutes. However these innovations were not popular, and in order to stop the staff deserting the monotonous jobs, on January 5, 1914, Ford took the radical step of doubling pay to $5 a day, and cut shifts from 9 hours to 8 - moves that were not popular with rival companies, although seeing the increase in Ford's productivity, most soon followed suit.
By the end of 1913, Ford was producing 50% of all cars in the United States, and by 1918 half of all cars in the country were Model Ts. Referring to the Model T, Henry Ford is reported to have said that "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black." This was because black paint was quickest to dry; earlier models had been available in a variety of colors.
On January 1, 1919, Edsel Ford succeeded his father as president of the company, although Henry Ford still kept a hand in management. The Ford company lost market share during the 1920s due to the rise of...