How Did Henry Ford impact history?
In particular, Henry Ford applied the production line method of manufacture to consumer products. In this method, every item and every process was broken down into its smallest actions and movements. Items gradually came together along the length of the production line, and no one person was responsible for more than a few elements of the construction. This approach wasn’t invented by Ford. It had been developed in Federal armouries during the American Civil War 1861-85 and was applied in a range of industries. It was often referred to as “armoury method”. But Ford used new approaches to work-study and time-and-motion analysis, as developed by Frank Gilbreth – see Wiki below. After Ford’s factories were seen by others in the automobile industry, his methods became standard and, by 1920, only high prestige marques (Rolls Royce, Mercedes Benz, Daimler, Lanchester etc) built cars using the old skill and craft approach. By 1940, practically all automobiles were built on a production line a
