Project Report on Henry Ford

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Henry Ford

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Introduction

Henry Ford was an innovator, an industrialist and an

outdoorsman a farmer's son who turned his mechanical interests into a global company that

transformed life around the world.

While always a dutiful contributor to the family farm, Henry's earliest exposure to his real

passion machinery and mechanics came from visits to town with his father, where he sawsome of the earliest technology of machines, engines and mills.

Henry Ford had established a solid career with good prospects at Edison Illuminating, Ford was

restless and ready to venture into the field of automotive engineering, in which he had long been

experimenting. He had confidence enough in his ideas that he believed he could continue to

support his family on them and of course eventually, he proved right.

Henry Ford was the founder of the Ford Motor Company and the father of the modern assembly

lines used in mass production. His Model T eventually revolutionized transportation and

American industry, contributing to the urbanization that changed American society in the early

twentieth century. His contribution to the automobile industry one of the largest in the world. His

intense commitment to lowering costs resulted in many technical and innovations, including

a franchise system that put a dealership in every city in North America, and in major cities on six

continents.

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Ford's impact on the American life was immense. By paying his workers subsistence wages, and

producing cars that were priced for this new market of workers as consumers, Ford brought the

means of personal transportation to ordinary people and changed the structure of society. His

plan of producing a large number of inexpensive cars contributed to the transformation of major

sectors of the United States from a rural, agricultural society to an urbanized, industrial one at a

time when America's role in the world appeared to many to have providential significance. A

complex personality, often referred to as a genius, Ford exhibited variou s prejudices and, despite

his own numerous inventions and innovations, a stubborn resistance to change. His legacy,

however, includes the Ford Foundation , one of the richest charitable foundations in the world,dedicated to support for activities worldwide that promise significant contributions to world

peace through strengthening democratic values, reducing poverty and injustice, promoting

international cooperation, and advancing human achievement.

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Childhood and Family Life

As a child, he was inspired by his mother, who encouraged his interest in tinkering.

His father was a farmer. He encouraged Henrys interest in the use of machines on the farm.

He was inspired by steam-powered tractors when he was a teenager. This made him think about

the way things work.

Born in Wayne County, Michigan, in an area that later became Dearborn, on July 30, 1863,

Henry Ford was the oldest of six children. Although he chose to leave the family farm and

pursue his own interests, Henry never strayed far from his roots.

As a young boy, Ford took apart everything he got his hands on; he became known around the

neighborhood for fixing people's watches. As he grew up, he explored every mechanical

opportunity he could find, learning to fix steam engines and run mill operations. In the 1890s, he

focused particularly on internal combustion engines.

With his love for the outdoors and rural values, Ford might easily have remained in agriculture,

but something even stronger pulled at Ford's imagination: mechanics, machinery, understanding

how things worked and what new possibilities lay in store.

During the summer of 1873, Henry saw his first self-propelled road machine, a steam engine

generally used in the stationary mode to power a threshing machine or a sawmill, but also

modified by its operator, Fred Reden, to be mounted on wheels connected with a drive chain

connected to the steam engine. Henry was fascinated with the machine, and over the next year

Reden taught him how to fire and operate it. Ford later said it was this experience "that showed

me that I was by instinct an engineer. "[1]

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Beginning of Career

He was fired from his first job.

Henry built his first gasoline engine at home and tested it in the kitchen. He mounted it on the

kitchen sink.

Thomas Edison was Henry Fords role model and later his close friend.

He built and drove race cars early in his career to demonstrate that his engineering designs

produced reliable vehicles.

He failed with his first two companies before he succeeded with Ford Motor Company.

The idea for using a moving assembly line for car production came from the meat-packing

industry.

He financed a pacifist expedition to Europe during WWI.

He adopted a paternalistic policy to reform his workers lives both at home and at work.

He was an unsuccessful candidate for the United States Senate in 1918.

He owned a controversial newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, that published anti-Jewish

articles which offended many and tarnished his image.

He promoted the early use of aviation technology.

Henry Ford built Village Industries, small factories in rural Michigan, where people could work

and farm during different seasons, thereby bridging the urban and rural experience.

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He sought ways to use agricultural products in industrial production, including soybean-based

plastic automobile components such as this experimental automobile trunk.

He was one of the nations foremost opponents of labor unions in the 1930s and was the last

automobile manufacturer to unionize his work force.

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Detroit Automobile Company and the Henry Ford Company

Henry Ford called his first vehicle the Quadricycle. It attracted enough financial backing for

Ford to leave his engineer position at Edison Illuminating and help found the Detroit Automobile

Company in 1899. The company faltered for a variety of reasons, and in 1901 Ford left to pursue

his own work again. Later that year, the Henry Ford Company was born, but Henry Ford himself

stayed with it only a few months. He left in early 1902 to devote more time to refining his

vehicles.

Henry Ford spent much of the next year or so working on his racing cars and winning some high-

profile races with them. The record setting attracted serious financial backing, along with smart

business partners such as James Couzens, the company's first business manager. Couzenss

business acumen complemented Ford's mechanical talents, and in the early years he was largely

responsible for important moves the company made in advertising, customer relations, dealer

franchises and more.

Within a few months of the June 16, 1903 founding of Ford Motor Company, the first Ford, a

Model A, was being sold in Detroit. Although there were 87 other car companies in the United

States, it soon became clear that Henry Ford's vision for the automotive industry was going to

work.

Ford, with eleven other investors and $28,000 in capital, incorporated the Ford Motor Company

in 1903. In a newly-designed car, Ford drove an exhibition in which the car covered the distance

of a mile on the ice of Lake St. Clair in 39.4 seconds, which was a new land speed record.

Convinced by this success, the famous race driver Barney Oldfield (1878 1946), who named this

new Ford model "999" in honor of a racing locomotive of the day, took the car around the

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country and thereby made the Ford brand known throughout the United States . Ford was also one

of the early backers of the Indianapolis 500 race.

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Ford's River Rouge Plant

Ford's philosophy was one of self-sufficiency using vertical integration. Ford's River Rouge

Plant, which opened in 1927, became the world's largest industrial complex able to produce even

its own steel . Ford's goal was to produce a vehicle from scratch without reliance on outside

suppliers. He built a huge factory that shipped in raw materials from mines owned by Ford,

transported by freighters and a railroad owned by Ford, and shipped out finished automobiles. In

this way, production was able to proceed without delays from suppliers or the expense of

stockpiling.

Ford's labor philosophy

Henry Ford was a pioneer of "welfare capitalism" designed to improve the lot of his workers and

especially to reduce the heavy turnover that had many departments hiring 300 men a year to fill

100 slots. Efficiency meant hiring and keeping the best workers. On January 5, 1914, Ford

astonished the world by announced his $5 a day program. The revolutionary program called for a

reduction in the length of the workday from 9 to 8 hours, a five-day work week, and a raise in

minimum daily pay from $2.34 to $5 for qualified workers .[6] The wage was offered to men over

age 22, who had worked at the company for six months or more, and, importantly, conducted

their lives in a manner of which Ford's "Sociological Department" approved. They frowned on

heavy drinking and gambling. The Sociological Department used 150 investigators and support

staff to maintain employee standards; a large percentage of workers were able to qualify for the

program.

Ford was criticized by Wall Street for starting this program. The move however proved hugely

profitable. Instead of constant turnover of employees, the best mechanics in Detroit flocked to

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Ford, bringing in their human capital and expertise, raising productivity, and lowering training

costs. Ford called it "wage motive." Also, paying people more enabled the workers to be able to

afford the cars they were producing, and was therefore good for the economy.

Ford was adamantly against labor unions in his plants. To forestall union activity, he promoted

Harry Bennett, a former Navy boxer, to be the head of the service department. Bennett employed

various intimidation tactics to squash union organizing. The most famous incident, in 1937, was

a bloody brawl between company security men and organizers that became known as "The Battle

of the Overpass."

Ford was the last Detroit automaker to recognize the United Auto Workers union (UAW). A sit-

down strike by the UAW union in April 1941 closed the River Rouge Plant. Under pressure from

Edsel and his wife, Clara, Henry Ford finally agreed to collective bargaining at Ford plants and

the first contract with the UAW was signed in June 1941.

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Bringing Cars to the Common Man

What made Henry Ford successful where others had failed (or succeeded on a much smaller

scale)? It wasn't just his vehicles, excellent as they were it was his unique understanding of the

potential of those vehicles to transform society.

Before Ford, cars were luxury items, and most of his early competitors continued to view them

that way, manufacturing and marketing their vehicles for the wealthy. Ford's great stroke of

genius was recognizing that with the right techniques, cars could be made affordable for the

general public and that the general public would want them. Ford focused on making the

manufacturing process more efficient so he could produce more cars and charge less for each.

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Innovating a New Future

Some of Ford's greatest innovations came not in the cars themselves but in the processes for

creating them, like his 1914 introduction of a moving conveyor belt at the Highland Park plant,

which dramatically increased production. Starting construction on the Rouge plant in 1917 was

the first step toward Ford's dream of an all-in-one manufacturing complex, where the processing

of raw materials, parts and final automobiles could happen efficiently in a single place.

Ford was also unique in recognizing that his business was about more than just cars; it was about

transportation, mobility, changing lifestyles. He anticipated the ripple effect from mass

production to create more jobs that let more people afford the cost-effective cars he produced.

Ford pushed for more gas stations and campaigned for better roads, understanding conditions

necessary for his product to make its mark. And his far-reaching vision opened his eyes to the

global market, making Ford Motor Company an international enterprise far earlier than any of its

competitors. At the height of Henry Ford's fame and business power, his company operated or

sold in more than 30 countries around the world, including such far-reaching places as Indonesia,

China, Brazil and Egypt, as well as much of Europe.

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Providing Opportunities for a Better Society

Henry Ford's personal motto of "Help the Other Fellow" spilled over into his management style;

he recognized that policies generous to his employees would result in happier workers and a

better product. He claimed, however, not to believe in conventional charity; rather he preferred

to provide opportunities for people to help themselves.

These are just some of the liberal innovations Ford implemented within his company:

The $5 workday, doubling the industry standard for a day's wages and bringing his

hardworking employees closer to affording the cars they built. Ford considered it a way

of sharing the company's profits with all those who had helped make those profits

possible.

Employment policies that created opportunities for the physically and mentally

handicapped and even ex-convicts.

A variety of educational facilities at the workplace, starting with the English Language

School at the Highland Park plant in 1914, when he realized his largely immigrant

workforce needed language skills and assistance.

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A Fascinating Personality

As Ford Motor Company's public image developed, much of it began to focus on the personality

of the company's charismatic leader. Ford made a fascinating subject for a variety of reasons. He

wasn't a "behind-the-scenes" kind of executive; rather, he stayed actively involved in company

operations and was frequently on hand at milestone events. He had a forceful, outspoken

personality that often expressed itself in highly quotable remarks. Moreover, his wide-ranging

interests led him to explore a variety of fields aviation, film, politics (including a run for the

U.S. Senate) that led to associations with other celebrities and people of note.

But it would be a mistake to conclude that Ford's celebrity associations involved just smiling for

the camera with the latest movie stars. The list of dignitaries and personalities with whom he

exchanged letters is long and impressive. Moreover, Ford had meaningful relationships with

many luminaries of his time. He shared an interest in agricultural experimentation with African

American educator and agriculturalist George Washington Carver. He communicated with

aviation pioneers such as Wilbur and Orville Wright and Charles Lindbergh, who were

consultants to the company's aviation division. America's leaders relied on Ford Motor

Company's wartime production, and Ford himself was well-acquainted with several U.S.

presidents.

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Henry Ford

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Life Beyond the Automobile

Cars were always central to Henry Ford's life: He built them, he raced them, he sold them. But

there was so much more to the man than his automobiles. He was a man of many interests and

had a highly developed sense of curiosity; he never stopped exploring new fields and learning

about new subjects.

In many ways, for many years, Ford Motor Company was inseparable from the man who

founded it, and Henry Ford's constant exploration of new areas and opportunities led the

company into a variety of pursuits beyond just automobiles:

Ford always maintained strong ties to his rural upbringing and frequently looked for ways

to support the work of farmers. In 1917, he and his son, Edsel, founded the Fordson

("Ford" and his "son") division to manufacture tractors that, like the Model T, would be

lightweight and inexpensive.

Ford Motor Company's Motion Picture Department was established in 1914 with a staff

of 24 that traveled worldwide producing promotional and educational short films. In the

1920s, the company was the world's largest producer of motion pictures more than

Hollywood or the New York studios! In that same period, half of all rural Americans saw

a Ford film as their first motion picture ever.

Ford's fondness for small-town American life and culture is most comprehensively recorded in

the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village (now part of what is called "The Henry Ford"),

which together form the largest museum in the country. In 1929, Ford founded The Edison

Institute, a combination school and museum to allow for education through the studying of

artifacts and cultural history, not just books. As he collected pieces of Americana, historic

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buildings, and more, this project of Ford's evolved into the sprawling cultural complex that it is

today. Company and tax records show that over his lifetime, Ford poured more than $10 million

of his own money into it.

There was very little that Henry Ford didn't either dabble in or undertake seriously. He co-

authored several books; he loved to dance and sparked a revival in old-fashioned American

dancing and country fiddling; he participated actively in a variety of philanthropic ventures.

What bound those interests together were curiosity and the will to learn.

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A Business Leader

Henry Ford retired (for the first time) in 1919, when he handed over leadership of his company

to his son, Edsel. Also In 1919, Henry, along with his wife and Edsel, acquired the stock of the

company's minority shareholders for the astonishing (for 1919) sum of $105,820,894 and

became the sole owners of Ford Motor Company truly making it a family-owned business for

the first time.

In 1943, after Edsel's death from cancer at age 49, Henry was persuaded to return as president of

the company and showed remarkable energy for a man in his 80s but many say he was never

the same after the death of his beloved son.

On September 21, 1945, the Ford Motor Company board of directors was presented with a letter

from Henry Ford, resigning as president of the company and recommending Henry Ford II,

Edsel's eldest son and Henry's eldest grandson, as his successor. With that, Henry Ford

permanently left behind the management of Ford Motor Company. He was 82 years old.

Henry Fords retirement found him as busy as ever, pursuing inte rests, accepting awards,

satisfying his boundless curiosity. His last day was no different: He spent April 7, 1947,

inspecting buildings and grounds around Dearborn that had been damaged by the worst floods in

that area's history. The flood had cut off power to Ford's home, Fair Lane. He died in his bed that

night by candlelight, in an odd re-creation of the electricity-free world into which he had been

born.

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An Immeasurable Legacy

The impact Henry Ford had on the world is almost immeasurable. His introduction of the

automobile into the mass market transformed agricultural economies in the United States and

even around the world into prosperous industrial and urban ones. Many historians credit him

with creating a middle class in America. His mass production techniques provided work that

many people (even the less educated) could do, and he paid them well for doing it. His high

minimum wages were revolutionary at the time, but these "profit-sharing" programs set a

precedent for fair distribution of company wealth that greatly influenced later management

practices.

And of course, there were the cars themselves. Henry Ford's curiosity and enterprising nature

were directly responsible for a long list of automotive innovations, many of which we take for

granted today, from the V-8 engine to safety glass.

As an outdoorsman, Henry Ford was deeply conscious of the impact his industry had on the

delicate natural world. He implemented practices that were progressive for his time replacing

wood with steel to conserve forests, using lighter materials to increase fuel efficiency, even

prohibiting the use of crowbars to open wooden crates so as not to damage the potentially

reusable lumber.

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Death of Edsel Ford

In May 1943, Edsel Ford died, leaving a vacancy in the company presidency. Henry Ford

advocated long-time associate Harry Bennett (1892 1979) to take the spot. Edsel's widow

Eleanor, who had inherited Edsel's voting stock, wanted her son Henry Ford II to take over the

position. The issue was settled for a period when Henry himself, at age 79, took over the

presidency personally. Henry Ford II was released from the Navy and became an executive vice

president, while Harry Bennett had a seat on the board and was responsible for personnel, labor

relations, and public relations.

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