December 1,1913
Henry Ford, a fledgling car maker in 1913 has a great idea, one that an associate gets while watching cattle "disassembled" in the slaughter houses of Swift Meat Company in Chicago. Ford has been having a problem meeting the demand for his wildly popular, inexpensive Model T automobile. Between 1908, when the company is founded until 1913, each car is assembled by hand by craftsmen/mechanics at his Piquette Avenue plant in Detroit. Assemblers walk over to a parts bin, grab a part, walk back to a stationary chassis and installed it. Then, they walk over to get the next part. At the end of 1913, a new method for building cars at a brand new plant (Highland Park) has started Ford on a path that cut the cost of a making a car by more than 50%. Move the chassis, not the people and parts. Manufacturing efficiency that will make the USA the envy of the industrial world has begun, of course, not without a cost.
On December 1, the assembly line began to roll.
