My Life and Work: Any Colour, So Long As It Is Black

Ford’s most famous idea was to make one good car very cheaply, in huge numbers.To do this, he had to change both the product and the way it was made.

“In 1909 I announced one morning, without any warning, that in the future we were going to build only one model, the ‘Model T’, and that the chassis would be exactly the same for every car.I said, ‘Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants, so long as it is black.’I cannot say that anyone agreed with me.The salespeople could not see the advantages that a single model would bring to production.

The first step forward in assembly came when we began taking the work to the men instead of the men to the work.A worker left to himself spends more time walking about for materials and tools than he does working.We now follow two rules: a man should never have to take more than one step if it can be avoided, and no man should ever have to bend over.

Around April 1913 we first tried a moving assembly line on one small part of the engine.One worker doing the whole job took about twenty minutes; when we split the work into twenty-nine steps along a moving line, it took five.Before, the best we had done was about twelve and a half hours to put together the frame of a car.With the moving line, the time fell to one hour and thirty-three minutes.”