Detroit Automobile Company Case Study

With the help of his friend, the Mayor of Detroit William C. Maybury, Henry was introduced to William H. Murphy who was a wealthy lumber merchant from Detroit. After receiving financial backing from Mr. Murphy and some of his friends, on August 5, 1899 the Detroit Automobile Company was founded. It was located at 1343 Cass Avenue at Amsterdam in Detroit, Michigan. By January of the following year the company produced its first vehicle which was a delivery wagon. They tried to make a couple other vehicles but they were not up to the standards that Ford wanted also, the vehicles ended up costing so much to produce that the sale price ended up being to high. The Detroit Automobile Company was officially dissolved in January 1901 (Bryan). While

It was housed in the new Ford factory that was built in Highland Park

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Michigan. Designed by architect Albert Kahn and completed in 1910, the enormous structure covered 60 acres and allowed for all functions in the assembly process to be housed in an orderly sequence under one roof. With its 50,000 ft.² of glass windows, the factory became known as the “Crystal Palace” (PBS). The company developed techniques of mass production which enabled them to greatly increase their output (TheFamousPeople.com). This would revolutionize industry in America. He got the idea for these from flour mills, canneries, breweries, and

It used to take twelve hours for them to make one single Model T but, with the help of the assembly line, it cut it back to two and a half hours. The assembly line was set up over one-hundred and fifty feet. The Model T’s chassis came down through the line, being pulled by a rope, and was assembled by one-hundred and forty workers. Each worker had their own specific job to help in assembling parts on to the chassis, which was broken down into eighty four steps. There were also more workers who sole job was to keep the one-hundred and forty assembly workers stocked with their parts. This saved a great deal of time because the assembly workers didn’t have to leave the line to get more parts for the next Model T coming down the assembly line. Another cost savings initiative by Henry Ford was the use of interchangeable parts. Unlike other cars of the time, the Model T featured interchangeable parts, which meant that every model two produced on that line use the exact same valves, gas tanks, tires, etc. so that they could be assembled and a speedy and organized fashion (Goss). With all of theses advance sets of the assembly line, and with workers being specialized on specific parts of the assembly, Ford ended up with a higher quality vehicle with less time and less waste during production.