Work tasks were simplified. By taking the skills and knowledge from his workers, Ford also took power. He was now able to regulate the rate of production. Production line workers now had to work to the speed of the man next him. Time and motion studies calculated the speed at which individual tasks were done, and than a standard was set. Time and motion studies were designed to ensure maximum efficiency on the production line and minimise waste. If workers didn't meet these standards
His factories were based around the idea of mass production on assembly lines. Everything was bought or produced in bulk to minimise cost and time thus maximising the amount that could be made, in both a physical and economic sense. It first happened in Fords River Rouge plant, Detroit, using his own ' internal economies of scale' he managed, for the first time, to radically decrease the average price of a car by mass production along with other cost saving ideas. Ford took much of the inspiration for his ideas from Taylor ( Talyorism ) and then combined them with his own to revolutionise the industry. With Talorism tasks are simplified and the planning is separate from doing or actual production.
It was very expensive to change the production of cars, the huge costs for machinery meant that once bought a piece of machinery would be kept and used even after it had become obsolete. This was perhaps due to Fords desire not to waste money in any way, shape or form. However this cost saving strategy was very short sighted in that it saved money in the short term but meant that in the long term Fords factories were unable to handle changes in market demand. The decline in productivity and profits in the 1960s and 1970s in the UK was a direct result of this.
On the production line workers were banned from talking and whispering, as Ford believed that this distracted them from the job in hand and would result in a decrease in production speed. It is also thought that due to Ford's intrinsically paranoid nature regarding all areas of his life and business, he didn't want workers conspiring against his work ethics. As a result, Sickness and general absenteeism became common place in his factories. Those who worked directly under Ford were reputed to admire him but at the same time be disillusioned by his unwillingness to progress and advance the company.
There was very little sense of job security when working for Ford. Ford had the ability to hire and fire as he pleased, something which he did regularly, often replacing older workers with younger ones to 'maximise' production speed. There was no correlation between wages and work rate, Ford was actually known to cut wages and then, later, raise a factories work rate. All these factors combined to create an uneasy, untrusting and unmotivated atmosphere with in Ford's factories. Fords obsession with generating as much money as possible was perhaps his companies greatest weakness. He was blinded by a desire to make as much of everything as possible. He was the epitome of the capitalist business man, concerned in the end with only the goal of making money.
The effect that Fords way of working brought about on industry, as a whole was to greatly improve the speed at which products could be produced. His ideas could be applied to almost any kind of mass manufactured product, not just cars. All industrialised nations benefited.
In the 1920s and 1930s huge depression and mass unemployment meant that people had very little in the way of disposable income to spend on luxury items such as cars. This resulted in a huge drop in demand. This drop in demand was also due to mass-market saturation. The Model T was the most common car in America and car buyers were tired of owning the same as their neighbours, people wanted change and variety, something Ford was unable to provide.
The period from 1945, the end of the war, to the beginning of the 1970s was a time of steady and continued growth, both in America and the UK as well as globally. It was also known as the 'Long Boom'. The way in which Fordism worked was now no longer seen as just a way to organise work and production but as a broader way in which to organise society as whole. It was seen to be a way of integrating production and consumption.
After the failure of traditional reflationary remedies, many politicians and intellectuals were convinced that Fordism had reached its social, organisational and technological limits. They believed that a new post-modern/post-Fordist form of society would emerge from the growing computer, media and communications technologies.
According to some, the introduction of information technologies would shift employment from the manufacturing and extractive industries towards the service sector, especially its media and high- technology companies. As a consequence, assembly-line workers would be replaced by white-collar professionals. In parallel, bureaucrats and industrialists would lose their political and economic power to scientists and academics, who had the skills to invent the new information technologies.
With the introduction of JIT (Just-in-Time) manufacturing in the early '70s, the old Fordist "just in case" manufacturing system where parts and spare components are stockpiled, was made obsolete. The principle of JIT was ( it is still used today ) to minimise inventory at each stage of the production process since surplus inventory represents unrealised value / profits. Originally adapted by the Japanese out of necessity in the scarce and lean conditions of post-war Japan, the JIT principle required that parts arrive "just in time" for their use in the production process. This was the time of Neo-Fordism. JIT was a far more efficient way of working but required much higher levels of co-ordination and much greater flexibility, something the old Fordist way could not provide. Production was now determined by the teamwork of the various units of the process as opposed to the speed of assembly line. JIT along with Neo-corporatism represented the overall more flexible forms of the post-Fordist economy, shifting away from macroeconmic concentration.
The post-Fordist period also saw the arrival of better pay for skilled workers. As machines and automated robots slowly took over the roles previously played by people, skilled workers (much like those who existed before Fordism) were once again employed to design, manage, build and look after them.
Fordism can also be see to be a general pattern of social organisation. This means the consumption of mass commodities in nuclear family households. Fordist society was an urban-industrial, "middle mass", wage-earning society. The Post-Fordist world in which we now live is more demand than supply-driven. B. Jessop argues "what is gradually emerging from the search process is a structural transformation and fundamental strategic reorientation of the capitalist state."
So it can be seen that in todays Post-Fordist society, the way in which companies operate is very different to that of how they did over 70 years ago. The rigidity and inflexibility originally set out by Fords working practices has now been replaced by a fast paced, dynamic and constantly evolving capitalist world.
However it has evolved and changed over the decades, from Fordism, to Neo-Fordism and than finally to the Post-Fordist society in which we now live. Fordism has changed the way in which we live our lives today. In what ever state we now see Ford's ideas, they do to some extent, still remain a blue print for the working society of today. The effect which Ford's ideas had on how our society works today and how the people within it live their lives can