The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

AUTOMATE JOBS AND REDUCE 
MATERIAL TRANSFER DISTANCES
Automation of a job, such as riveting crankcase arms to the crankcase, 
can improve productivity 60-fold, which supports the premise that Lean 
manufacturing can make high-wage American workers more than com-
petitive with cheap offshore labor. Ford also cited a more than 10-fold 
reduction in the distance that a cylinder casting had to travel in the fac-
tory. This underscores the principle that transportation of materials and 
parts, even inside the factory, is nonvalue-adding.
* * *
Painting the rear axle assembly once gave some trouble. It used to be dipped 
by hand into a tank of enamel. This required several handlings and the ser-
vices of two men. Now one man takes care of it all on a special machine, 
designed and built in the factory. The man now merely hangs the assembly 
on a moving chain which carries it up over the enamel tank, two levers then 
thrust thimbles over the ends of the ladle shaft, the paint tank rises six feet, 
immerses the axle, returns to position, and the axle goes on to the drying 
oven. The whole cycle of operations now takes just thirteen seconds.
The radiator is a complex affair and soldering it used to be a matter of skill. 
There are ninety-five tubes in a radiator. Fitting and soldering these tubes in 
place is by hand a long operation, requiring both skill and patience. Now it is 
all done by a machine which will make twelve hundred radiator cores in eight 
hours; then they are soldered in place by being carried through a furnace by 
a conveyor. No tinsmith work and so no skill are required.

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Getting into Production  •  73
We used to rivet the crank-case arms to the crank-case, using pneumatic 
hammers which were supposed to be the latest development. It took six men 
to hold the hammers and six men to hold the casings, and the din was terrific. 
Now an automatic press operated by one man, who does nothing else, gets 
through five times as much work in a day as those twelve men did.
In the Piquette plant the cylinder casting traveled four thousand feet in the 
course of finishing; now it travels only slightly over three hundred feet.