“The beauty of life lies in the power of one person doing
small but effective things.” I have learnt, seen and lived this line since the
time I took up to practicing Japanese Buddhism. Our modern society cripples the
perception and belief in the power of an individual. We feel powerless in the
face of global crisis. This fatalistic attitude can also be seen in handling
personal crisis.
One person alone can change the environment she/he is in. In
turn, each individual in the environment can change another environment and set
of people in it. As we know that change can be good and bad. Time has proven
and people have vouched that it is the positive change which is everlasting.
Humans have an innate capacity to resist, be immune to and nullify negative
impact. The way our body has immunity to resist illnesses, our heart has the
immunity to reject the negative and embrace the positive.
This is reflected in an article I was reading on Henry Ford.
Here it goes…
 |
| Model T car (Ford 1908) |
In 1908 Ford hired an industrial efficiency expert named
Walter Flanders to reorganise his factory for producing Model T cars. The
factory was made to operate like ‘a river and its tributaries’. Each section of
the factory was mechanized and speeded up. Model T parts flowed into
straight-line production with little pieces becoming steadily larger. Starting
with the magneto-coil assembly department and spreading through the entire
factory to the final assembly department, parts and assemblies were moved by
automatic conveyor belts and every work task was broken into smaller pieces and
speeded up.
The results were astounding. Where it had previously taken a
worker 728 hours to assemble a Model T, it now took only 93 minutes. This
increased speed of production, greatly reduced the cost of each Model T,
increased Ford’s cash balance from 2 million dollars to 673 million dollars and
allowed the reduction of the price of the Model T from 780 dollars to 360
dollars. The world had never seen anything remotely like it. The cars simply
poured off the line.
At its maturity in the mid 1920s, the Rouge located just
outside Detroit , dwarfed all the other complexes. It was a mile and half long and three-quarters
of a mile wide. its 1,100 acres contained 93 buildings, 23 of them major. There
were 93 miles of railroad track on it and 27 miles of conveyor belts. Some
75,000 men worked there, 5000 of them doing nothing but keeping it clean, using
86 tons of soap and wearing out 5000 mops each month. The Rouge had its own steel
mill and glass plant right on site.
Henry Ford says, “Take just one idea- a little idea in
itself-an idea that any one might have had, but which fell to me to develop
that of making a small, strong, simple automobile, to make it cheaply, and pay
high wages in its making. On October 1, 1908, we made the first of our present
type of small cars. On June 4, 1924, we made the ten millionth. Now in 1926, we
are in our thirteenth million.
That is interesting but perhaps not important. What is
important is that, from a mere handful of men employed in a shop, we have grown
into a large industry directly employing more than two hundred thousand men,
not one of whom receives less than six dollars a day. Our dealers and service
stations employ another two hundred thousand men. But by no means do we
manufacture all that we use. Roughly we buy twice as much as we manufacture,
and it is safe to say that two hundred thousand men are employed on our work in
outside factories. This gives a rough total of six hundred thousand employees,
direct and indirect, which means that about three million men, women and
children get their livings out of a single idea put into effect only eighteen
years ago. And this does not take into account the great number of people who
in some way or other assist in the distribution or the maintenance of these
cars. And this idea is only in its infancy.”
In the year 2012, we know fully well how the assembly line
culture of work has damaged the society in the following ways:
- Decreasing the importance of education
- Decreasing opportunities for intellectual stimulation
- Shifting the focus from man to machines, thus dehumanising
humankind and making him feel like a small cog in the bigger wheel. This is
ironical considering that Walter Flanders, the one man who made all the
difference has led the assembly line work and Kaizen approach to its culture to
a dehumanising consequence. Not to forget that it was again a one man show in Albert
Kahn, the architect of the gigantic Ford plant.
However, it is important to note that one man has and can
make a difference which snowballs into something significant.
Just a thought...
