The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

Ergonomics and the Adjustable Height Skillet
Anderson (2007) discusses the adjustable height skillet, which holds an 
entire automobile at a comfortable height for the worker. Its ancestor as 
introduced by Ford, while not adjustable, did account for workers of dif-
ferent heights to make the task as easy as possible. Note how the workers 
travel with the work, but by riding the skillet instead of walking, and with 
the parts ready at hand as they are needed.
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About the best we had done in stationary chassis assembling was an average 
of twelve hours and twenty-eight minutes per chassis. We tried the experi-
ment of drawing the chassis with a rope and windlass down a line two hun-
dred fifty feet long. Six assemblers traveled with the chassis and picked up 
the parts from piles placed along the line. This rough experiment reduced 
the time to five hours fifty minutes per chassis. In the early part of 1914 we 

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Getting into Production  •  65
elevated the assembly line. We had adopted the policy of “man-high” work; 
we had one line twenty-six and three quarter inches and another twenty-
four and one half inches from the floor—to suit squads of different heights. 
The waist-high arrangement and a further subdivision of work so that each 
man had fewer movements cut down the labour time per chassis to one hour 
thirty-three minutes. Only the chassis was then assembled in the line. The 
body was placed on in “John R. Street”—the famous street that runs through 
our Highland Park factories. Now the line assembles the whole car.