How Ford's Assembly Line Cut Model T Build Time
In 1913 Ford moved cars past workers instead of workers around cars. Build time for one Model T fell from 12 and a half hours to 93 minutes, and the price fell with it. Here is how it happened.
In this article
Before 1913, building a Ford Model T took about 12 and a half hours of work per car. By early 1914 a finished car came off Ford's lines every 93 minutes. The change did not come from one clever machine. It came from rethinking how work moved through the factory, one small step at a time, at the company's Highland Park plant in Michigan. This is the story of how that happened, and what it did to the price of a car.
Before the line
The Henry Ford museum, in an article by Matt Anderson, describes the old way of building as stationary: a car stayed in one place and workers came to it. Under those methods a car took 12 and a half hours to build. The Model T had been on sale since October 1908, when it was priced at $850, according to HISTORY.com. The price would fall sharply over the next decade, as the sections below show.
A trial with magnetos
The first experiment was not on a whole car. Around the start of April 1913, according to The Henry Ford, flywheel magnetos, a part of the engine's electrical system, were placed on moving lines. Previously one worker completed one flywheel in some 20 minutes. On the moving line, one finished flywheel came off every 13 minutes. With further adjustments, the line produced a finished flywheel magneto in just five minutes.
Spreading to the whole car
The idea then spread to other parts. Ford adapted the line to engines, then to transmissions, and finally to complete chassis. Chain-driven delivery replaced what the article calls the slide method. Workers stood along a waist-high platform, and each added one piece as the work passed by.
Sources differ on the date. The Henry Ford says the moving line was extended to complete chassis in August 1913. HISTORY.com dates the chassis going on the moving line to 7 October 1913, and the Library of Congress says Ford introduced the moving assembly line in October 1913. They agree on the place, Highland Park, and on the main result.
The numbers
- 12 and a half hours. Time to build a Model T under the old stationary methods.
- 93 minutes. Time for a finished Model T by early 1914, when separate lines had joined into three continuous ones. HISTORY.com calls this figure 93 man-minutes, meaning it describes labour time per car, so it is worth reading with care.
- Every 24 seconds. How often HISTORY.com says a Model T eventually came off the line.
- Hundreds to thousands. The Library of Congress says daily production rose from hundreds of cars to thousands after the new line was introduced.
A line that was never finished
The Henry Ford stresses that the line was never complete. It stayed under constant review. Small changes, such as adjusting the height of a work platform or moving a drill press, saved seconds, and the seconds added up to large gains in output. The speed-up was less a single event than a habit of looking for the next small improvement.
What it did to the price
Lower costs meant lower prices, and lower prices meant more buyers. The Library of Congress gives the Model T's price as $850 in 1908, $490 in 1914 and $260 in 1924. HISTORY.com says it had fallen to $360 by 1916 and later dropped below $300. The Henry Ford says the Model T sold for as little as $260. HISTORY.com reports that sales in 1916 were more than triple those of 1912.
More than 15 million Model Ts had been built or sold by the time production ended in 1927, according to HISTORY.com and the Library of Congress. HISTORY.com says that was nearly half of all automobiles sold worldwide up to that date, and that the moving line spurred an industrial revolution in factories around the world.
Why it still matters
The moving line is the best-known example of a simple idea: make the work flow past the worker, break the job into small steps, and keep improving each step. The Model T story also shows how a lower price can come from improvements in how a product is made. The Henry Ford says the time and cost savings are what let Ford lower the price, which raised demand and drove further efficiency gains.
Sources
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