LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Assembly Line: Henry Ford
built 641 days ago
This year marks the 100th anniversary of Ford Motor Co. and the 90th anniversary of the moving assembly line. Whenever textbooks or TV documentaries discuss mass production, they invariably mention Henry Ford. In reality, much of the credit should go to another man who worked in Ford’s shadow for many years. The architect of the modern assembly line was Charles Sorensen. His experiments changed the face of manufacturing. Sorensen’s revolutionary idea of moving a vehicle past various workstations, with one worker performing a specific assembly task, transformed the fledgling auto industry and helped Ford dominate the marketplace for many years.
Source:
A key factor in the development of the moving assembly line was the mechanization of materials handling. Before power-driven conveyors were introduced to move materials in the automobile industry, they were commonly used in such industries as brewing, milling, canning, and meatpacking. The first power-driven conveyors in the Ford factory transported materials to individual workstations. Later they moved parts while workers worked on them.
Source:
In 1942, among war production heroes, Henry J. Kaiser was building a Liberty cargo ship every 4 days using new techniques of pre-fabrication and assembly line methods. The concept of "unit loads" stored on pallets began to take hold in industry during World War II. The result was the expansion of the forklift truck business.
Source:
Olds should have become known as "The father of automotive assembly line," although many people think that it was Henry Ford who invented the assembly line. What Ford did do was to improve upon Olds’s idea by installing conveyor belts. That cut the time of manufacturing a Model T from a day and a half to a mere ninety minutes. Henry Ford should been called "The father of automotive mass production."
Source:
From Henry Ford’s assembly line to Apple’s iPod, every great innovation started with a great idea. But in the business world, it’s a lot easier to say "no" to new ideas than it is to dedicate time, money, and resources to developing them. Tags: Instant messaging, Brian Libby, Flickr, IM, photo-sharing, IM client, team, accident, Google Inc., analysis, search engine, photograph, desktop, computer Articles 2007-06-05
Source:
The assembly line developed for the Ford Model T had immense influence on the world. Despite oversimplistic attempts to attribute it to one man or another, it was in fact a composite development based on logic that took 5 years and plenty of intelligent men. The principal leaders are discussed below.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Henry Ford