The genius of the plant
Beyond all doubt or question, the Ford Motor Company's plant at Highland Park, Detroit, Michigan, U. S. A., at the time of this writing is the most interesting metal-working establishment in the world—because of its size (something over 15,000 names on the payroll); because it produces one single article only (the Ford motor car) for sale; because the Ford Motor Company is paying very large profits (something like $15,000,000 a year); and because, with no strike and no demand for pay increase from its day-wage earners, the Ford Company made voluntary and wholly unexpected announcement January 5, 1914, that it would very greatly increase day-pay wage and would at the same time reduce the day-work hours from nine to eight.
The Ford Motor Company is under one-man control, Henry Ford, head of the company, holding 58 1/2 per cent of the $2,000,000 capital stock; and it was Mr. Ford's own initiatory proposal to augment daypay largely while reducing work-day hours from nine to eight, with an entire disregard of the commercial features of the situation—simply and solely with a view to the increased happiness and self-respect of his workmen, and in the face of Ford Company dividend reductions made "Ford bonus" announcement, as first published in the Detroit afternoon papers of Monday, January 5, 1914.
Employers of labor the world over burst into a torrid eruption of denunciatory comment over the Ford bonus as soon as it became generally known, giving no heed whatever to its stated cause—a desire to better the condition of day-pay earners by wage increase, and to augment the number of day-pay workers by shortening the work day from
nine hours to eight hours, all as given out by the company at the time of first announcement. The Ford Motor Company turns out one thousand automobiles per day at its Highland Park plant; two other plants, one at Ford, Ont., Canada, and one at Manchester, England, bring the total Ford car-producing capacity to at least 1,200 cars per day, and the company has a world-wide selling and service organization which ensures the sale of its cars up to production capacity limit.
The volume and growth of the business are most strikingly shown by a simple tabulation of the company's gross sales for the past eight years, the figures below being for the fiscal year which ends October 1.
1907 was a panic year. The sales from October 1, 1913, to February 1, 1914, were $26,814,842.12, an increase of $8,034,601.33 over the same period twelve months ago. The expansion has followed closely the placing of more sales agents in the same territory, giving each agent less territory to cover. From these figures of astounding growth, better per haps than any other form of statement, one may realize the problems the shops have had to meet to fill output demands.
Besides these altogether unusual industrial and commercial features, the Ford company has gone into thermo-dynamics on original lines by installing a 5,000 horse-power gas engine, the largest yet shown, of its own design, to drive the Highland Park plant. This large engine, and a smaller gas engine, of the same general design as the large engine but only 1,500 horse power, driving an 850-kilowatt dynamo and a2,000 cubicfoot air compressor, now occupy the floor of the present power house, single floor and basement, as will be shown fully in later chapters. But not content with this impressive gas-engine exhibit, the Ford company is now actively engaged in enlarging the power-house ground plan and giving it two additional floors to make room for no less than seven motors with gas producers, "regenerators" and steam boilers, all based on an entirely novel scheme of heat saving, original with this company.
The top floor of the enlarged and remodeled power house will carry 30,000 horse power of gas producers and 6,000 horse power of steam boilers, connected by "regenerators," which are entirely new elements in heat-saving; the second floor, 10-foot ceiling, serves for ash-handling, while the main floor will carry seven engines, the present small gas engines of 1,500 horse power, to drive the present 850-kilowatt dynamo and 2,000 cubic-foot air compressor, and, in addition, five combined steam and gas-engine units, of 6,000 brake horse power each. The idea of combining steam cylinders with gas-engine cylinders for heat saving is entirely new, so far as now known to the Ford engineers. The dimensions and arrangement of these five new combined steam and gas engines, all alike, are, gas-engine side, two 4-cycle, water-cooled cylinders, tandem , pistons 42 inches diameter by 72 inches stroke; steam side, tandemcompound , high-pressure pistons, 36 inches diameter by 72 inches stroke, low-pressure pistons 68 inches diameter by 72 inches stroke, both sides to work on the one crank-shaft, each combined gas and steam unit to show 6,000 brake horse power.
The gas-producer-regenerator-steam-boiler combination and working scheme are confidently expected to form, when completed, the most economical heat-engine plant ever shown. The entire cost of these Highland Park power-plant changes and additions, including everything, will be something like a million and a half of dollars, showing conclusively that the Ford company does not hesitate to follow its own convictions as to what is the correct thing in the way of plant-driving engines.
Again, in the matter of low labor-cost production, the Ford company elects to pay day-wages instead of working its men at piece rates or on the premium plan; and, as the Ford plant profits are large while the cars are low-priced, the labor recompense is of much interest. The Highland Park plant has a gray-iron foundry believed to be better equipped for time saving and low-cost production than any other foundry in the world, and has developed a machine-shop system of subdividing workmen's duties which effects very large labor-cost savings. It has applied team work to the fullest extent, and by this feature in conjunction with the arrangement of successive operations in the closest proximity, so as to minimize transportation and to maximize the press.
The boards travel toward us down the long line seen in the lower picture growing in completeness as they move, each "team", working simultaneously on opposite sides of the board, adding some step to the assembly. As the finished board comes off the end of the line it is taken away by the wire-rope conveyor shown above, counting itself and recording its own number as it passes out. sure of flow of work, it succeeds in maintaining speed without obtrusive foremanship. It works on a single unit assembly for sale and on onlyone production order per year, keeping the stock of components constantly between close limits through the use of "shortage chasers" reporting at two-hour intervals—all as will be explained fully in a following chapter. It has a machine-tool plant, largely of specialized construction, which cost $2,800,000, works about 240 tool-makers and 50 special tool-and-fixture draftsmen in its tool and fixture-making department, and today employs 40 wood-pattern makers and 65 metalpattern makers in improving its own shop facilities. It has installed shop lines of overhead transportation in various forms not equaled elsewhere , and is improving its already superlatively excellent metal-working plant so rapidly that Ford-factory methods are more than likely to be changed before the description is published. Lastly, and quite the most notably of all, the Ford company is willing to have any part of its commercial, managerial or mechanical practice given full and unrestricted publicity in print. Therefore these disclosures of Ford company means and methods for production-cost reduction and profit ensuring will be read with deep interest by all students of metalworking economies the world over.
The Ford Highland Park plant is the direct result of the thoughts and desires and fancies of Henry Ford's own mind and the work of Henry Ford's own hands; hence a brief sketch of Henry Ford's life is not only the most befitting introduction to these revelations of Ford plant practice , but is absolutely indispensable to a full understanding of the Ford Highland Park plant—the establishment, its efficiency, and its colossal commercial success.
Henry Ford's Own Story
William Ford, of English ancestry though born near the town of Brandon, Ireland, and bred a farmer, emigrated to America in the year 1847 at the age of twenty years, bought forty acres of the two hundred and forty acre Litogot farm in Greenfield township, eight miles west of Detroit, Michigan, and began as farmer of his own estate. He found favor in the eyes of Mary Litogot, married her in his thirty-fifth year, and later fell heir to the Litogot farm. Six children, three boys and three girls, were born to the Fords before the untimely death of their mother at the early age of thirty-five years, and of these six children the eldest was Henry Ford, born July 30,1863, who grew to be a slender lad, unlike either parent, with a passion for mechanical construction.
The boy Henry learned to read and write at home, and began to attend school in the town of Springwells, a division of the original township of Greenfield, when between seven and eight years of age, walking the two and a half miles between the Ford farm and the schoolhouse twice a day through the winter school terms and working on the farm (which he detested) through the summer times.
Henry Ford's mind and fancy both drove him to things mechanical, while his father wished him to become a farmer, the result being that Henry Ford attended this school from his seventh to his seventeenth year the boy decided for himself that his schooling was completed at the age of sixteen, and that he would not be a farmer and would be a mechanic. Following the bent of his irresistible inclination towards things mechanical , the boy Henry left the farm, against his father's commands, went to Detroit, eight miles eastward, and entered Flower Brothers' machine shop at apprentice wages, and at the same time began to do night work with a watch and jewelry repairer, McGill, who had a little place at Baker and Twentieth streets. On the farm, before leaving for Detroit, the boy Henry had a shop of his own gathering together and building, in which he had a vise, a bow-string driven lathe, and some sort of a forge, and he made himself a competent country-side repairer in general of everything which came in his way, so that he fell easily into his night work at McGill's, as he did into his apprentice duties at the shops.
Flower Brothers were general machinists and steam-engine builders, working about 30 or 40 men, and here young Ford served for about nine months only, leaving this first machine-shop job to enter the employ of the Dry Dock Engine Company, Detroit, Lake marine engineers, building steam engines exclusively. They worked 206 hands and had the largest machine shop at that time in Detroit.
At the end of his two years of Dry Dock Company service Henry Ford, aged nineteen, felt himself master of the machinist's trade as practiced at those shops, and he left his job there and took service with John Cheeny, State agent for the Westinghouse portable steam engines, built at Schenectady, New York. His position was that of "road expert," going out to set up new engines of 10 to 20 horse power, to give instructions to purchasers, and to make repairs. This was a summer job; and Henry Ford, never idle for a minute, put in the two winters of his two years with John Cheeny in his old shop on the farm in Greenfield, where he had a forge, vise, and upright driller, and a hand-lathe, foot-power driven, together with a varied kit of hand tools that enabled him to build almost any small-size machine that interested his adventurous mind. During these two winters Henry Ford, twenty and twenty-one years of age, worked most of the time on a farm locomotive, mounted on mowing-machine cast-iron wheels and driven by a single-cylinder steam engine, piston about 4 inches diameter with 4-inch stroke, with gear reduction to the rear drivers. It was not designed for any especial service , the idea being to make it serve as a general farm tractor. The gauge was somewhere about 48 inches, wheel-base about 72 inches. It had a fire-tube vertical boiler, and the machine ran well and pulled well and taught its youthful constructor many lessons that can be learned only from the experience of a young mechanic directing the labor of his own hands in constructing new machines of his own devising. During this period he also made many experiments with electric machines. At the end of two years' work for Cheeny, Henry Ford's father, seeking to win his son from the degradation of things mechanical, made him a present of 40 acres of land in Dearborn township, two miles west of.
Greenfield. This 40 acres of land was largely forest—maple, beech, oak and basswood—and young Ford bought a circular saw mill, rented a 12horse -power portable engine to drive it, went to work for the Buckeye Harvester Company setting up and repairing "Eclipse" portable farm engines in the summers, and ran his saw mill and sold lumber winters for two years. At the end of his twenty-fourth year, Henry Ford, being now a landed proprietor and a lumber manufacturer, happily married Miss Clara J. Bryant, born and raised in the township of Greenfield, Michigan , but not a schoolmate of her husband. The issue of this marriage was an only child, a son, Edsel Bryant Ford, born November 6, 1893.
Immediately following his marriage, Mr. Ford, feeling the need of a home, used lumber of his own sawing to construct a house, 31 feet square and a story and a half high, on the Dearborn 40-acre farm, moved into it with his bride, and also moved his private machine shop from his father's farm to the Dearborn farm; he sawed lumber and sold it, did some farming, and began building a steam road-carriage to fill in his leisure moments.
For the chassis of this, the first Ford passenger car to run on common roads, an ordinary buggy was taken, and equipped with a singlecylinder steam engine, piston 2-inch diameter and 2-inch stroke. The speed reduction was double, a belt from the motor crank-shaft to a sprocket shaft and chain from the first sprocket to the differential-gear sprocket, with divided axles to which the rear driving wheels were fixed.
The gauge was 56 inches and the wheel base about 60 inches. The steam boiler for this road carriage was the same puzzle to Henry Ford that it has been to every common-roads steam-carriage builder from the days of Cugnot, 1769, to the present time. Boiler after boiler was built—water-tube and fire-tube and flash designs, all with high pressures, from 250 to 400 pounds. None of them was entirely satisfactory to their designer, who finally concluded that the steam engine was not the best driver for a common-roads passenger vehicle, and abandoned this, his first and only steam-car, uncompleted, when he was twenty-six years old. At the same time he gave up his life as a farmer and lumber manufacturer on the Dearborn 40-acre homestead, obtained employment as night-shift engineer for the Detroit Edison Illuminating Company (twelve hours out of the twenty-four, from 6 p. m. to 6 a. m., at $45 per month), rented a house at 58 Barley Street, only two squares from the Edison plant, and began living thJre with his wife, bringing his machine shop from the Dearborn farm ana setting up his tools in the barn of the Bagley-street residence. At the end of three months the Edison Company began to recognize the vajue of the new engineer and raised his pay to $75, and at the end of nine months promoted Henry Ford, who had in the meantime showed much ready skill in making some emergency repairs, to the position of chief engineer of its main plant at $100 per month, which was soon increased to $125 per month, the limit wage. This chief engineer Ford drew for the seven years he held the position; he lived in the Bagley-street house, was supposed to be on duty during the entire twenty-four hours of every day in the year, and put in his days at the Edison engine room and his nights at the Bagleystreet house and his private machine shop in the Bagley-street barn. In that barn shop he built the first Ford gas-engine-driven passenger car.
In his own narrative of this seven years, which took him to the age of thirty-three, Mr. Ford did not specify his hours for sleep; he simply said that he was in good health and did not sleep very much during those seven years of double duty.
The Bagley-street Ford car motor was two 4-cycle gas-engine cylinders , placed horizontally side by side, water-cooled, pistons 29/i6 diameter by 6-inch stroke, make-and-break spark ignition, with poppet valves, 3^-inch diameter intake and 7/s-inch diameter exhaust. The wheels were wire spoke, 28-inch diameter front and rear, with rubber tires, 42-inch gauge and 60-inch wheel base. This motor was cooled by thermal circulation between the cylinder jackets and an open-top water tank. This first Ford car was placed on the road in the early part of 1893, ran well, and could do 25 or 30 miles per hour.
In 1895 Henry Ford began his second gas-engine-driven car, 52-inch gauge, 84-inch wheel base, wire wheels with rubber tires, motor two cylinders opposed, pistons 4-inch diameter with 4-inch stroke, watercooled , 4-cycle, with a lever and ratchet hand-start from the driver's seat. This was placed on the road in 1898. In the same year Mr. Ford left the Edison company service and the Detroit Automobile Company was organized to exploit this opposed-cylinder car. It had $50,000 capital stock, of which Henry Ford held one-sixth and his salary was $100 per month as engineer in charge; $10,000 cash was paid in and two or three cars were built.
Henry Ford left the Detroit Automobile Company (which afterwards became the Cadillac Automobile Company) in 1901, bought a shop building at 81 Park Place, north of Grand River Avenue, moved the tools from his own shop to this new place, and at once began the construction of a new motor car, cylinders 4 by 4 inches opposed, 28-inch diameter wire wheels, gauge 56 inches, and 90-inch wheel base; this was on the road in 1902. Mr. Ford built this car without assistance, having money enough of his own to finance the construction, and promptly organized the Ford Motor Company, capital stock $100,000, of which he held 25j/£ per cent and in which he held the position of chief engineer with $2,400 yearly pay. Twenty-eight thousand dollars cash was paid in, and the commercial model, the first "Ford car" known to the world at large, was placed on the road in June, 1903; the first Ford car was sold to a purchaser in the following month, July, of the same year. The Ford Motor Company was highly successful, paying dividends from the beginning of commercial operations.
In 1906 Mr. Ford realized that he could not carry out his own clearly defined policies without absolutely free control, and, the Ford-car reputation and sales being well established, he had no difficulty in obtaining money to pay $175,000 for enough stock to bring his personal holdings up to 51 per cent of the entire company shares, which gave him a free hand. Later, he paid seven for one for enough more shares to bring his personal holdings up to 58J^ per cent of the present $2,000,000-capital Ford Motor Company organization, which 583/2 per cent is now the sole and undivided property of Henry Ford himself.
Here, to those who can read between the lines of this briefly sketched biography, is the whole story—the farm-born and bred boy with an irresistible natural inclination towards mechanical construction, gathering a shop together on the farm. His first metal-cutting tool, fashioned from one of his mother's steel knitting needles, broken in two, shaped to a cutting edge, hardened by heating red hot and plunging it into a cake of soap, and furnished with a roughly whittled wooden handle, was exhibited by Mr. Ford while giving these items of personal history, as he sat at his table in his room at the present Ford factory, working 15,000 hands, with a machine-tool equipment valued at $2,800,000; the farm boy and schoolboy becoming at the age of sixteen a skilled repairer of everything that came his way, from watches to farm machinery, and all this (much to his father's disapproval) without pay, for the mere love of doing things; the home-leaving for the drudgery of a machine-shop apprentice; the quick changes of employment as soon as one shop had no more lessons to teach him; and, through it all, his ownership of his own workshop, from earliest boyhood to this day—the self-urging to work day and night—and also through it all the constantly appearing passion for mechanically propelled vehicles, from the boy-built farm locomotive to a thousand Ford cars a day at the Highland Park shops. Always his own master, no matter what his service to others might be. Obsession? Fate? Luck? Genius? Whatever the word may be, certainly a life to one end, and a supreme success resulting from an existence of supreme effort.
Henry Ford: A Character Study
Henry Ford's character is extremely simple, and extremely easy to read; he is perfectly frank, is wholly self-reliant, is extremely affectionate and confiding by nature, is absolutely sure he is right in every wish, impulse and fancy, places no value whatever on money, and has a passion for working in metals and particularly for devising and building mechanically driven wagons to run on the ground or on common roads. His sense of humor is keen and| he is ready to touch with his hands the men whom he likesT/ He has no sense of personal importance, meets his factory heads on terms of absolute and even deferential comradeship, and because he had, up to about his thirty-fifth year, an intimate personal knowledge of day-wage life, his strong natural impulse to aid his workmen and bring some chance of happiness into their lives takes the form of increasing day-pay and shortening labor-hours of his own motion, without waiting to be stimulated by demand from others for such action on his part.
Mr. Ford is by nature a comrade; and this, together with his sense of humor, leads him to smile often and much and to enjoy a laugh at his own expense, and he is rather inclined to under-rate his own abilities and his own achievements. ^Socially, he likes men, especially young men and boys, land has a deep affection for wild animals and birds and flowers growing, which leads him to dislike to see animals or birds in captivity, and to dislike to see flowers cut from their roots.
War, battle, killing, and bodily mutilation are all alike abhorrent to Henry Ford, who lives a live of absolute freedom himself, following his own desires, fancies, and impulses with utter and absolute disregard of the opinions of others, as do all artists and originators and men of achievement.
As to literature, Mr. Ford may be said to have no literary tastes or inclinations whatever. He cares nothing for fiction, nothing for poetry, nothing for history and very little for scientific works, but has a strong liking for epigram, for short sayings which say much and include sharp contrasts. He abhors letters, and will not read a two-page letter through if he can possibly avoid it.
Henry Ford was the first-born child of two ardent lovers of mature age, both children of the soil. He was a child of great and absolutely faithful and constant love, and is therefore what he is, a strict monogamist by nature, strongly interested in homeless young boys, of whom he cares for a considerable number at Dearborn. He follows his own selfimposed tasks without one thought of looking back, unconscious of
obstacles in his chosen path and careless of reward at the end of his labors, so that he but follow his ideal and reach the goal he has set for himself.
In person Henry Ford is full medium height, spare, active, goes bareheaded , perfectly healthy; he is wholly self-reliant, a law and a gospel
to himself, a man of incredible capacity for work with his own hands, and governed in his social life by a deep sympathy for all free living things and especially for young things.
Henry Ford's rightful Coat of Arms is a file and hammer crossed, with a glowing heart above and the motto "I love," "I build," and "I give," in the side and bottom space.
Being what he is here said to be, what his biographical sketch shows him to be, and what his birth inexorably determined he should be, Henry Ford is an inventor, a creator, a master mind with a vivid imagination whose dictates he follows relentlessly; a generous comrade, making strong friends and willing servants of those whom he takes into his confidence , quick to praise the young men who are his factory aids and who are constantly encouraged by him in their strongly individualized and highly successful efforts towards bringing the Highland Park plant to that condition of Ideal Efficiency which is the never-to-be-f ully-attained ambition of the competent factory manager at large.
Mr. Ford, having perfect health and digestion, cares nothing for food, is never fatigued, does not use tobacco in any form, has no liking for any stimulant, and eats but two meals a day; apparently never knows fatigue, listens willingly to others, decides quickly, and of two mechanical devices chooses intuitively that which best suits the desired end, be it of his own suggestion. or another's.
Henry Ford as a Factory Manager
Save in the broadest sense, Mr. Ford has never been the manager of the Ford Motor Company's plant at Highland Park. From the very first showing of the second car, 1902, up to the present day, Mr. Ford's energies and those of his immediate assistants have been directed wholly to three principal objects: first to the production of enough cars to meet purchasers' demands; second, to making car improvements; and third, to means for distributing cars and instructing and assisting Ford car buyers and users in the proper care and management of their newvehicles.
The general scheme of the Ford Motor Company's operations has been largely of Mr. Ford's origination, but the details of organization have been carried out by others. So far as a close observer can discover, Ford himself had no premeditations, but acts wholly upon inspiration. j^In reply to a direct question he disclaimed any systematic theory of ] 1 organization or administration, or any dependence upon scientific man; agement, and seemed to lay emphasis wholly upon the personal equation.
As he put it, "I know what kind of help I want and I look around until I find the man I am sure will give it." He has thus built up about himself not so much an organization as a staff of aides—all ranking as equals, none in command of any one department, all ranking any titular departmental head, each eager both to meet any suggestion Ford advances or to volunteer suggestions for his decision, each as likely as the other to be put in charge of any shop-betterment idea Ford may conceive, because he observes no discrimination in lines of service. This alone makes the Ford establishment unusual, to say the least, in its direction. It also makes the establishment his own absolutely throughout, though, as he said, leisurely looking out of his office window, "I have no job here—■ nothing to do."
The Basis of Ford's Success—The Ford Car
The whole vast expansion of the Ford plant, which has evolved the methods and policies to be set forth in these chapters, rests upon one broad, simple foundation—the commercial success of the Ford car. Some survey of the scope and reason for this success is therefore essential to any full understanding of the mechanical and physical features of the business built upon it.
From the first, Ford's motor-car designing ran towards a small, lowcost automobile, to meet all-round service requirements of the average man at a price which the average man could afford to pay. The 1914 "Model T" Ford car is 56-inch gauge, 100-inch wheel base, has woodspoke wheels, a half-elliptic spring in front and a half-elliptic spring in the rear, is driven by a four-cylinder, 4-cycle water-cooled motor of about 20 brake horse power, pistons 3%-inch diameter with 4-inch stroke, and a planetary speed change, two forward speeds and a reverse with one universal joint to the propeller shaft and bevel gear and balance gear to the rear axles. It can show about 35 to 40 miles an hour on good roads, making about 18 to 20 miles to the gallon of gasoline.
The distinctive feature of the Ford-car chassis design is the triangular bracing of both front and rear.axles, with a globe-joint triangle apex attachment to the chassis frame, which gives an absolutely free vertical wheel position and adjustment to each one of the four wheels independently , to suit road surface level variations. The Model T chassis frame is supported front and rear the same, at the middle of the end cross members.
Ford's experience in connection with farm steam engines made him fully aware from the very first of what must be done for the buyer to make him a fully satisfied purchaser—how the buyer must be coached and taught, and supplied with low-cost repairs and replacements; and he saw to it that every owner of a Ford car was taught and helped in every way towards satisfactory service.
The small price, small weight and general suitability for both business and pleasure requirements of the average man and average family, combined with the inherent desire of humanity at large for rapid translation , and with methods of placing Ford cars in easy reach of prospective buyers, and the careful attention to the needs of car buyers and users, taken together, fully account for the spectacular financial success of the Ford Motor Company Highland Park plant, where a new-born car pushes the doors open itself and glides out into the world under its own power, a thousand times during each working day of the year.
Expert analysis does not show any one point of such commanding merit in the Ford car as to compel the intending buyer to prefer it to any other. The Ford car is good at all points, but it has only one point of radical departure in design from many other small cars; the Ford igniV tion is by a flywheel magneto instead of by a wholly distinct magneto, gear-driven from the crank shaft, as is common practice; but this one point of notable difference is not enough to account for the Ford car sales preponderance, because the ordinary separate magneto gives a good and satisfactory ignition; hence the real cause of the Ford car sales volume must be looked for elsewhere.
Every man takes the easiest way to do what he wishes to be done. The Ford selling system details make it easier for the man who desires a motor car to buy a Ford car than to buy any other car whatever, simply because the vast multitude of selling agencies places the Ford car in easiest reach of the intending buyer, who is thus made certain to consider the Ford before buying; and when made fully acquainted with the Ford car and fully informed as to the small fuel consumption, the low price of replacements (which are listed at bare cost) and taught by the willing salesman to handle the car on the road, the inquirer is almost certain to purchase because of the low price.
Thus the commercial serpent of Ford car trade is seen to have its tail in its mouth, making the circle complete and endless, and, so far as can now be seen, impregnable. The Ford cars are bought by everybody because they are low-cost, good, and everywhere present; and they are low-cost, good and everywhere present because the large sales enable the Ford company to produce cars cheaply, to make them good, and to support thousands of selling agencies scattered over the entire habitable face of the world. The astounding results expressed briefly in figures are given on page 3.
The Highland Park Plant
The Ford Motor Company factory is located in the village of Highland Park, adjoining the north boundary of the city of Detroit, Michigan , U. S. A. Highland Park has at the date of this writing (Feb. 14, 1914), a cosmopolitan population of about 20,000, including Hungarians, Poles, Servians, Armenians, Bohemians, Russians, Jews, Roumanians, Bulgarians, Slavs, Italians, Croatians, Swedes, Norwegians, Austrians, Negroes, Irish, Scotch, English, Dutch, French, Germans, Danish, Welch, Spanish, Japanese, Greeks and Mexicans. The greater part of these representatives of the diverse nations of the world have been added to the Highland Park population because of the Ford-plant location in that village.
The Ford Motor Company's realty extends 56 rods north of Manchester Avenue, on Woodward Avenue, 180 rods east on Manchester Avenue, 56 rods north to the Detroit Terminal Railway Company's right of way, and thence the north boundary line extends 180 rods west to Woodward Avenue. The Detroit Terminal Railway is a belt line, connected with every railway entering Detroit, giving the Ford spur tracks direct railway communication to all railway stations in North America. An outline ground plan is shown on the folding insert facing page 24, and plans of the separate floors are given on the reverse side. Full descriptions of the shop and foundry and other buildings and of their equipment and operation are found in later chapters.
\This Highland Park realty holding was purchased in 1907, at a cost of $62,000, and the first Ford factory building on this plot was erected in 1908. Additions to the plant buildings have been and yet are under continuous erection, and this story will be obsolete before it is printed because of the very large additions now under construction.
| At the present time there are three buildings four stories high, the total factory floor-space, including the machine shop, covering 28.29 acres, with an additional 2.12 acres of floor area in the Administration building. The two six-story buildings under construction will add 14.85 acres, making a total of 45.26 acres of floor space.
The superstructures of all buildings except those of one story are reinforced concrete. The one-story buildings, which comprise the machine shops, heat-treatment building, foundry, auto shed, engine house and boiler house, are structural steel with concrete foundations and brick or concrete side walls.
Floors in machine shop are of wood over tar rock or cinders, on a sixinch concrete bottom. In the heat-treatment building floors are of brick except directly under the machines, where they are of concrete. In the foundry a greater portion of the floor is dirt-filled, with some patches of concrete and brick. Throughout the factory proper, most of the floors are of concrete, though the upper three floors of the four-story building facing Woodward Avenue are of one-inch maple on a cinder fill, and a few maple floors are laid in other parts of the plant.
Roofs are generally of reinforced concrete covered with built-up roofing , flat except on the machine shop and foundry, which are saw-toothed. The exterior walls of all factory buildings show about 75 per cent of glass, double strength, in steel sash. The roofs of two of the four crane-ways and of the auto shed are nearly 100 per cent ribbed wire glass. Heating of the old buildings is by indirect system on the first floors and by direct hot-water radiation on the upper stories. The new buildings will be heated entirely by indirect system, the apparatus being placed on the roof and the air forced down through hollow interior columns.
It carries the product from one operation to the next and finally to sorters who put the various pieces into their separate boxes level, and has about 3 feet of sandy loam overlying a deep blue-clay bed, with limestone below. The water supply for manufacturing purposes comes from three artesian wells, and is slightly salt. Drinking water is taken from city mains, and is excellent.
The cash cost of the Ford plant buildings, tanks, and fixtures totaled $3,575,000, February 10, 1914. The first building was erected in 1908, v and additions have been in constant progress ever since. The machinetool equipment has cost about $2,800,000, to February 10, and is constantly being increased. Very large six-story buildings are now (April, 1915) in progress of erection on each side of the railway tracks, each track served by a traveling crane which will load and unload cars by crane transfer direct to seventeen different landings on each floor of these new buildings, and the entire space between the foundry and Manchester Street will be roofed over when the new buildings are completed . Handling of materials and work in progress of finishing is now the principal problem of motor-car cost-reduction, as the machine tools and the assembling processes and methods are now highly specialized; but the factory, as now arranged, employs somewhere from 800 to 1,000 truck-men, pullers and shovers, most of whom will be needless when the new buildings are completed and traveling-crane service is given fullest possible employment. The present machine shop will be transferred to the new buildings, and the present machine-tool floors will be used for storage only. In the new shops the foundry will occupy the top floor of one building and rough stores and the machine tools demanding most light will occupy the other top floors; work in progress will descend in
natural course of operations until it reaches the train-loading platforms in completed condition, ready for instant shipment. This will be more fully shown and described later.
The lightest Ford car, 1914, weighs 1,400 pounds, and as 1,000 cars are turned out per day this gives 1,400,000 pounds of materials to be handled many times over in the course of each day's work, thus making transportation improvements the principal factor of future Ford car flat-cost reduction.' The importance of shop transportation was very early recognized in the Ford machine shop, and is answered as far as may be by placing the needful tools and fixtures, no matter what they are, in the line of work-finishing travel, rather than in groups of similar tools, as in the ordinary machine-shop practice. The present shop transportation is by a gantry crane serving the foundry, three traveling cranes serving the stock and heavier work machine-shop floor, and by a monorail line, equipped with electric locomotives, which makes a belt line about the shop, with a direct line from the foundry past the heattreating building, to the machine shop. [ But in addition to these means of mechanical load-carrying there is yet a very large volume of muscular lifting, hauling, pushing and dragging done in the Ford shops, much of which can be saved in the new six-floor buildings, with crane service
direct from the railway tracks to seventeen separate landing points for each of the floors of each building and with the foundry on the top floor. The American manufacture of the third model (the Ford car of today) was no sooner established than the organization of the Canadian Ford Company, Limited, capital stock $1,000,000, was undertaken and carried out by Mr. Ford and his associates, the Canadian stockholders furnishing about one-third of the capital invested. The company was chartered in August, 1904, to supply the English provincial demand, the territory to be covered comprising Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India.
The Canadian company began commercial operations by building 110 cars in 1905, increased this output to 11,589 cars in 1913, at the end of which year they had built a total of 29,000 cars and were in a highly prosperous condition. The new Canadian plant, located l}/2 miles in a northerly direction from the custom house, Windsor, Ontario, Canada, was begun in 1910, and the buildings have now a floor area of 300,000 square feet and are being enlarged.
The Canadian Ford Company, Ltd., at the time of this writing, February 25, 1914, carries 1,510 names on the pay roll and is working up to about maximum capacity in turning out 110 cars per day, identical in every particular with the American Ford cars. The Canadian factory plant is the same, save in size, as that at Highland Park, and the works are driven by a pair of Hamilton-Gray engines, 750 horse-power each, 1,500 horse-power combined, similar in design to the big engines at Highland Park.
The Ford company is by no means builder of the entire Ford car. The bodies, wheels, tires, coil-box units, carburetors, lamps, 90 per cent of the car painting, all drop-forgings, all roller and ball bearings, grease cups, spark plugs, electric conductors, gaskets, hose connections and hose clips, the horn, the fan belt, the muffler pipe, and a considerable part of the bolts and nuts, are purchased from outside sources of supply. There is about $11,000,000 value of drop forgings made yearly in the United States, and of this the Ford company buys about $5,000,000 worth, or nearly one-half. The body making is another very large item, which employs several thousand men in five entirely separate and distinct factories.
(To shorten as much as may be the lines of travel of materials and components in the shop, the machine tools are placed much closer together on the floor than is usual, so that there is but barely room for the workman to make his needful movements; and to simplify each individual 's task as much as possible, team work is employed very largely,
the work sliding along on pipe ways as assembling progresses. A direct necessity for successful team-work is ready closet access, and the closets are therefore placed over the tool-cribs, one or more for each assembling job, so that team workers may lose as little time in necessary absences as possible. The arrangement is illustrated on page 28.
The foregoing brief particularizing of the peculiar shop conditions, brought about by mere works magnitude, will enable the attentive reader to follow some detailed examples of Ford shop practice intelligently , although the Ford production routine involves some altogether novel agencies, among which the "shortage chaser" is the most unusual as well as the most indispensable feature, all, as will be shown in the immediately following chapter, describing some of the more notable features of Ford machine-shop practice.