Lessons Learned by a Filipino Entrepreneur From Henry Ford
Posted on July 4th, 2009
Henry Ford worked for Edison Illuminating Co. in Detroit as a chief engineer. He wanted to be part of the company’s vision of a bright new future which motivated him to devote his spare time to build a crude machine of two bicycles placed side by side and motorized by a gasoline engine that he called “Quadricycle.†The first ride in his “quadricycle†was with William H. Murphy, a lumber tycoon in Detroit. After proving the machine’s success, they found themselves into the industry.
Ford was the superintendent in charge of production of the Detroit Automobile Company which opened in 1899 after nearly a decade of working in his “quadricycle.†Ford couldn’t build a car fast enough to keep the company in the business so the ventured only lasted a year. Ford then came up with another plan on how to spread the word about his car and his name- by building a racer. With the success of his racing ideas, by 1903, he was able to catch the attention of the benefactor he needed to start his own company, the Ford Motor Co.
From a wagon factory, he converted it into a shop and started building, with the help of his hired workers, his new design, the Model A. In July of 1903, a Chicago dentist was the first buyer of his Model A. After a year of production, Ford Co. has sold more than 500 units of Model A cars.
During that time, only the wealthy can afford the carriage without a horse because other automakers were only building luxury-laden automobiles. Henry ford said, “I will build a motor car for the great multitude…it will be so low in price that no man will be unable to own one.†With this vision, he built the Model T which is more reliable and cheaper to build. In 1908, “Tin Lizzie†the nickname of Model T, went on sale. The company even declared refusal of orders because they could not meet the demand anymore. With the problem that the company had faced on satisfying the demand, it became a new challenged for Ford.
Ford addressed to this problem by creating an assembly line. He reasoned out that building automobiles can be quicker and more efficient if each worker would remain in one designated area while performing one specific task. In August 1913, dragging a chassis by rope and hoist across the floor, the new way of mass production was born. The new system had cut into half the twelve and a half hour production time of the old system. With a year of refining and perfecting the system, Ford had reduced the production of a car even more into just 93 minutes.
But another problem arose, the burnt out of his work force. Due to problems in the turnover rate the company had to employ nearly 1, 000 workers for every 100 jobs that it wanted to fill. Ford then decided to compensate his employees each of 5$, almost twice of their recent rate that resulted to flooding of workers to the company’s gate.
With the thought that the stockholders are hinders to his plans, by 1919, Ford bought all his stockholders out. Then leading the company as he opted, he explored other business enterprises including constructing tractors and a single- passenger plane, mail route, and as well as the first regularly scheduled passenger flights. Among his ventures, the grandest was a factory built in a 1,096 acre plant on the Rouge River. The Rouge was one giant machine in itself and was the largest industry complex during its time.
Solving his problems and being able to cut the price of his cars into hundreds of dollars, Ford had achieved his two aims in life of bringing the pleasures of automobiles to several of people as it can be and to provide high paying jobs to lots of people.
