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Automobile: The Machine that Changed the World
Published on 30 June, 2015
Manager at
TATA Motors Ltd
It all started
with Henry Ford, the founder of ford motor company. Before him, automobile was
something meant for the elite classes. The automobile industry used craft
production and was concentrated in Europe. Each car was unique as each of them
was manufactured one at a time. Take this as the right knuckle of car1 would
not be same in dimensions as compared to car2 even if they belong to the same
models. This was more or less condition of all the industries back then. There
was no concept of large scale manufacturing anywhere in any industry. Henry
ford introduced the concept of large scale manufacturing and mass production.
Components started to become identical and replaceable. This gave a boom to
automobile manufacturing, reduced the cost and made automobile a commodity of
common use making life easier. But this was not the only effect. The concept of
mass manufacturing was introduced to all segments of industry and it was one
big thing.
After that came the phase of automation and moving assembly lines. Again it was introduced in Automobile sector by the same legendary Henry Ford. This reduced the production time of cars, ensured better use of workforce and specialization of task. Again this was a big concept and was embraced by all types of industry from textile mills to food processing, everything started to get automated. This caused a huge jump in production of goods along with a hell lot of other things, the great depression being one of them. It was the automobile industry which was changing the world of manufacturing from inside.
At this point of time, Alfred Sloan of General motors introduced the concept of standardization of components and dedicated tools for production. This seems a very common thing now but at that time it was a ground breaking concept and brought hard automation to epic level. Again this concept was used by all other industries. After this there were a few decades when all automobile company worked on reducing the production time, idle time, cost involved in production and new ways were devised to manage the workforce and all these were followed by the whole manufacturing segment. The automobile industry was setting the pace of development of world and shift of power. The work of Ford and Sloan shifted the power and industrial dominance from Europe to USA.
But after the world war 2, the Japanese automobile industry began to grow significantly. They introduced the concept of Lean manufacturing and Kaizen to the industry which lead to the creation of a whole new era in automobile manufacturing which ultimately propagated to all other industries and took the world with surprise. It was complete shift from hard automation to flexible automation, increasing inventory to decreasing it, large batches to small batches. They prophesized that the ideal batch size should be 1. This was a complete disruption, and helped them to reduce cost, increased control over quality, and ability to meet the changing consumer demands instantly leading to increased number of models being introduced. The US automobile industry succumbed and Japanese captured the automobile market.
But lean was not just limited to automobile industry as every other thing. It instantly was adopted by the whole world and every industry. It shifted the dominance from USA to Japan and Korea from which USA could never recover. The state of automobile industry forced all other industries to work on quality improvement, safety, better products at lesser costs and production based on consumer demands. The automobile industry has been the trend setter for one whole century and that’s why they call it the machine that changed the world. Period.
After that came the phase of automation and moving assembly lines. Again it was introduced in Automobile sector by the same legendary Henry Ford. This reduced the production time of cars, ensured better use of workforce and specialization of task. Again this was a big concept and was embraced by all types of industry from textile mills to food processing, everything started to get automated. This caused a huge jump in production of goods along with a hell lot of other things, the great depression being one of them. It was the automobile industry which was changing the world of manufacturing from inside.
At this point of time, Alfred Sloan of General motors introduced the concept of standardization of components and dedicated tools for production. This seems a very common thing now but at that time it was a ground breaking concept and brought hard automation to epic level. Again this concept was used by all other industries. After this there were a few decades when all automobile company worked on reducing the production time, idle time, cost involved in production and new ways were devised to manage the workforce and all these were followed by the whole manufacturing segment. The automobile industry was setting the pace of development of world and shift of power. The work of Ford and Sloan shifted the power and industrial dominance from Europe to USA.
But after the world war 2, the Japanese automobile industry began to grow significantly. They introduced the concept of Lean manufacturing and Kaizen to the industry which lead to the creation of a whole new era in automobile manufacturing which ultimately propagated to all other industries and took the world with surprise. It was complete shift from hard automation to flexible automation, increasing inventory to decreasing it, large batches to small batches. They prophesized that the ideal batch size should be 1. This was a complete disruption, and helped them to reduce cost, increased control over quality, and ability to meet the changing consumer demands instantly leading to increased number of models being introduced. The US automobile industry succumbed and Japanese captured the automobile market.
But lean was not just limited to automobile industry as every other thing. It instantly was adopted by the whole world and every industry. It shifted the dominance from USA to Japan and Korea from which USA could never recover. The state of automobile industry forced all other industries to work on quality improvement, safety, better products at lesser costs and production based on consumer demands. The automobile industry has been the trend setter for one whole century and that’s why they call it the machine that changed the world. Period.