The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

KEEP THE WORK IN CONTINUOUS 
MOTION, AVOID BATCH OPERATIONS
Ford achieved the seemingly impossible (as described by the so-called 
“expert” above) in metal casting through the replacement of batch opera-
tions with single-unit flow. Arnold and Faurote (1915, pp. 85–86) mean-
while describe the conversion of a batch annealing process to a continuous 
flow operation that carried the parts through a furnace on a continuous 
chain. The idea of keeping the work in continuous motion while avoiding 
any kind of batching and queuing underscores Ford’s approach to process 
design, and it is equally applicable today.
* * *
Our foundry used to be much like other foundries. When we cast the first 
“Model T” cylinders in 1910, everything in the place was done by hand; 
shovels and wheelbarrows abounded. The work was then either skilled or 

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Getting into Production  •  71
unskilled; we had moulders and we had labourers. Now we have about five 
per cent of thoroughly skilled moulders and core setters, but the remaining 
95 per cent are unskilled, or to put it more accurately, must be skilled in 
exactly one operation which the most stupid man can learn within two days. 
The moulding is all done by machinery. Each part which we have to cast has 
a unit or units of its own—according to the number required in the plan of 
production. The machinery of the unit is adapted to the single casting; thus 
the men in the unit each perform a single operation that is always the same. 
A unit consists of an overhead railway to which at intervals are hung little 
platforms for the moulds. Without going into technical details, let me say the 
making of the moulds and the cores, and the packing of the cores, are done 
with the work in motion on the platforms. The metal is poured at another 
point as the work moves, and by the time the mould in which the metal has 
been poured reaches the terminal, it is cool enough to start on its automatic 
way to cleaning, machining, and assembling. And the platform is moving 
around for a new load.