History of the Ford Motor Company
The Ford Motor Company was officially founded on 16th
June 1903, by Henry Ford and eleven other business associates.
The principal intention of this group of businessmen
was to create an affordable motor vehicle, accessible
to the general public. The company made its first official
shipment just one month after its establishment to a
doctor from Illinois, but it was progression to a production
line manufacture that really acted to put the Ford company
on the map and revolutionise the motor industry. The
Ford Motor Company by no means pioneered the assembly
line technique, nor was it the first to adopt such methods,
yet the company played an integral role as far as the
technique’s general adoption and expansion into
other forms of American industry was concerned.
In 1913, the Highland Park Plant first opened and
began to produce motor vehicles using the new production
line method. Their Model T had been in production
since 1908, but the assembly plant method obviously
sped up production time whilst reducing manufacturing
costs. The popularity and success of the Model T,
with sales amassing 15 million, meant that by 1927,
just under 25 years after its foundation, the Ford
Motor Company spanned the globe. However, although
during this early period, as production was very much
on the increase, the Ford Company was forced to address
major staffing issues and face up to the grievances
of assembly line staff. On average throughout the
early 1920s, the staff turn over was peaking at 60%;
this was due mainly to the unpleasant nature of production
line tasks, which were very monotonous and tiring.
Aside from this Ford’s production quotas were
constantly increasing, and so demands on the workers
were becoming more and more great. This situation
was solved with wage increases; Ford workers were
actually allocated double the accepted standard hourly
rate for the industry.
In 1925, the Ford Company acquired the Lincoln Motor
Company which enabled them to branch into luxury motor
vehicles, the acquisition of the Mercury Motor Company
in 1930 meant that the company was expanding even
more. However, the Ford Company was losing prominence
within the motor industry as a whole, mostly due to
the fact that it was not in keeping with the common
practice of releasing a new model vehicle every year;
obviously the company did eventually subscribe to
this procedure but the Ford Company was never really
able to regain the standing it had held during the
earlier part of the century.
The outbreak of the Second World War meant that the
Ford Motor Company was issued with many contracts
from the American government to manufacture plane
parts, especially for ‘bombers’ and later
moved onto the production of entire aeroplanes. During
the 1950s the Ford Company became involved in the
famous ‘Thunderbird’ project and it was
during this decade that they went ‘public’,
accumulating more than 350,000 stockholders by the
end on 1956. The sixties were the period of the real
globalisation of the Ford Company, motivated by the
economic situation of previous decades; in 1967 Ford
Europe was established.
Currently Ford is still recognised as a key player
in the motor vehicle industry and the company has
evolved to include brands such as Lincoln, Mercury,
Mazda, Land Rover, Volvo, Aston Martin and Jaguar.
|
