The year 1914 had just begun when Henry Ford dropped the bomb: would share half of the profits achieved in one year among all its workers. The figure, it was expected, would amount to about 10 million dollars at the time. The next day, his factory had collapsed due to the number of people waiting to enter the assembly line.
The move was as bold as it was essential for the company. In those years the factories had a serious problem with absenteeism and Henry Ford was very clear about his ideas. He knew that mass production would make the production of his cars cheaper, but he needed a lot of sustained labor.
It is what we know as the Fordismfrom which large-scale chain production emerged, with the consequent cost savings. And the more copies of the same product are sold, the cheaper it is because the faster the fixed costs are amortized. That is why Henry Ford did not complicate things in the slightest: “Any customer can have a car painted any color they want as long as it is black.” once said about the Ford T.
The phrase was more sly than anything else but it explained well what he wanted to do with his cars. However, Ford left many other phrases related to his method of producing cars that were just as interesting. Some of them, in fact, can be applied today although, curiously, part of the original philosophy of that production process that made the Ford T the first mass car has to be adapted.
From Ford T to the future electric car
And when it comes to winning the market, Henry Ford was very clear that you had to pay attention to what was important: “the less complex an article is, the easier it will be to manufacture and the cheaper it will be sold”, as stated in the book My life and work of Henry Ford himself.
He aim is different, the simplification of the product facilitates simpler production and reduces productive times. Therefore, it can be manufactured faster and cheaper so you can play with the price when selling the product on the street.
This is exactly what according to some expertsthey have obtained from China. BYD and Tesla are simplifying their products as much as possible to save on production costs and thus be able to compete against the extremely well-oiled and efficient machinery that is Toyota.
The problem for this last company is that This way of working completely rethinks your own quality standards but, above all, it forces you to rethink your entire production system. And an electric car is not manufactured the same as a combustion car. That is why there are consulting companies that have pointed out to Toyota that it is not acting correctly if it simply thinks of both technologies in a very similar way.
At Ford they have been thinking about this idea for a long time. The company has acknowledged that Chinese cars have been taken to their facilities to dismantle them and understand what makes them different. Ford’s fascination with vehicles from this Asian country is such that Jim Farley, CEO of the company, He has admitted that he did not want to get off his Xiaomi SU7.
To catch up, at Ford they have joined that trend that says that an electric car cannot be produced like a combustion car. With this we will escape from the single line, from the path on which the Fordism but the final goal is the same: reduce production costs. Follow the maxim of making the product the simplest possible object because that, in practice, makes production cheaper and allows you to sell cheaper.
They do it by opting for tree manufacturing, which they have called “Ford’s new universal production system for electric cars”. Instead of assembling the car on a single line, Ford has devised another system that is based on three subassemblies that end up joining together almost at the end of the production process when the car should already be very close to leaving the assembly line. Thus, we have three individualized spaces: one for the front of the car, another for the rear and a last one that includes the battery, seats and console.
According to the company, the new system allows them to produce their electric vehicles 40% faster at the Louisville Assembly Plant factory where the company has invested almost 2 billion dollars to renew it in depth and remove its “medium-sized electric trucks” from there. That is, electric pick-up and large SUVs that in Europe you would consider large.
With this new system, they assure, it’s easier to be efficient in the design of the electronics and the installation of the cables, which represents a saving in weight and, above all, in money that must be invested in wiring. A maxim that we have already seen in other models on the market such as the BMW iX3. According to Ford data, they will need 50% fewer electrical connections, 50% fewer cooling installations and 20% fewer parts.
In addition to all this, the plant will have WiFi-7 and a private 5G system for sending data which, according to Ford, will allow them to carry out more exhaustive quality controls at any point in the production process. This means finding any type of defect sooner and remedying it as soon as possible.
That is to say, the company’s intention is to reinvent itself for the future but following the premises that its creator already set for them more than 100 years ago.
Via | L’Automobile
Photo | Wikipedia and Bram Van Oost
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