The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

The Importance of Reliability
The chapter’s last segment reinforces Ford’s statement that reliability is a 
major selling point. This idea is commonplace today, when buyers of auto-
mobiles and major appliances check the reliability ratings in Consumer 
Reports and similar publications.
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In the meantime, the company had become world-wide. We had branches in 
London and in Australia. We were shipping to every part of the world, and in 
England particularly we were beginning to be as well known as in America. 

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58  •  The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work
The introduction of the car in England was somewhat difficult on account of 
the failure of the American bicycle. Because the American bicycle had not 
been suited to English uses it was taken for granted and made a point of by 
the distributors that no American vehicle could appeal to the British mar-
ket. Two “Model As” found their way to England in 1903. The newspapers 
refused to notice them. The automobile agents refused to take the slightest 
interest. It was rumoured that the principal components of its manufacture 
were string and hoop wire and that a buyer would be lucky if it held together 
for a fortnight! In the first year about a dozen cars in all were used; the second 
was only a little better. And I may say as to the reliability of that “Model A” 
that most of them after nearly twenty years are still in some kind of service 
in England.
In 1905 our agent entered a “Model C” in the Scottish Reliability Trials. In 
those days reliability runs were more popular in England than motor races. 
Perhaps there was no inkling that after all an automobile was not merely a 
toy. The Scottish Trials was over eight hundred miles of hilly, heavy roads. The 
Ford came through with only one involuntary stop against it. That started 
the Ford sales in England. In that same year Ford taxicabs were placed in 
London for the first time. In the next several years the sales began to pick up. 
The cars went into every endurance and reliability test and won every one of 
them. The Brighton dealer had ten Fords driven over the South Downs for 
two days in a kind of steeplechase and every one of them came through. As a 
result six hundred cars were sold that year. In 1911 Henry Alexander drove 
a “Model T” to the top of Ben Nevis, 4,600 feet. That year 14,060 cars were 
sold in England, and it has never since been necessary to stage any kind of a 
stunt. We eventually opened our own factory at Manchester; at first it was 
purely an assembling plant. But as the years have gone by we have progres-
sively made more and more of the car.

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59
5
Getting into Production
This chapter begins with the very valuable observation that organizations 
must look at the cost of things that are absent along with that of things that 
are present. The ISO 9001 (International Organization of Standardization) 
standard for quality management systems is an example. A quality manage-
ment system is far more conspicuous by its absence, in the form of defects, 
poor service, and even medical malpractice, than by its presence. A good 
decision process, therefore, will ask: “What is the cost of not doing or having 
this?” as well as: “What will it cost to buy or implement this?”
This chapter repeats the common sense fact that the product (or service) 
and not the employer pays wages, which means that the workforce must 
help make the process more efficient if it wants higher pay. It adds that 
customers pay more than they should, and workers earn less than they 
should because of the huge inefficiencies that exist in most production 
and service operations. Lean manufacturing, the scientific element of his 
universal code, removes these inefficiencies.
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