My Life and Work
satisfactory basis for exchange is a matter of grave doubt. That is a
question which I shall talk of in a subsequent chapter. The gist of my
objection to the present monetary system is that it tends to become a
thing of itself and to block instead of facilitate production.
My effort is in the direction of simplicity. People in general have so
little and it costs so much to buy even the barest necessities (let
alone that share of the luxuries to which I think everyone is entitled)
because nearly everything that we make is much more complex than it
needs to be. Our clothing, our food, our household furnishings--all
could be much simpler than they now are and at the same time be better
looking. Things in past ages were made in certain ways and makers since
then have just followed.
I do not mean that we should adopt freak styles. There is no necessity
for that Clothing need not be a bag with a hole cut in it. That might be
easy to make but it would be inconvenient to wear. A blanket does not
require much tailoring, but none of us could get much work done if we
went around Indian-fashion in blankets. Real simplicity means that which
gives the very best service and is the most convenient in use. The
trouble with drastic reforms is they always insist that a man be made
over in order to use certain designed articles. I think that dress
reform for women--which seems to mean ugly clothes--must always
originate with plain women who want to make everyone else look plain.
That is not the right process. Start with an article that suits and then
study to find some way of eliminating the entirely useless parts. This
applies to everything--a shoe, a dress, a house, a piece of machinery, a
railroad, a steamship, an airplane. As we cut out useless parts and
simplify necessary ones we also cut down the cost of making. This is
simple logic, but oddly enough the ordinary process starts with a
cheapening of the manufacturing instead of with a simplifying of the
article. The start ought to be with the article. First we ought to find
whether it is as well made as it should be--does it give the best
possible service? Then--are the materials the best or merely the most
expensive? Then--can its complexity and weight be cut down? And so on.
There is no more sense in having extra weight in an article than there
is in the cockade on a coachman's hat. In fact, there is not as much.
For the cockade may help the coachman to identify his hat while the
extra weight means only a waste of strength. I cannot imagine where the
delusion that weight means strength came from. It is all well enough in
a pile-driver, but why move a heavy weight if we are not going to hit
anything with it? In transportation why put extra weight in a machine?
Why not add it to the load that the machine is designed to carry? Fat
men cannot run as fast as thin men but we build most of our vehicles as
though dead-weight fat increased speed! A deal of poverty grows out of
the carriage of excess weight. Some day we shall discover how further to
eliminate weight. Take wood, for example. For certain purposes wood is
now the best substance we know, but wood is extremely wasteful. The wood
in a Ford car contains thirty pounds of water. There must be some way of
doing better than that. There must be some method by which we can gain
the same strength and elasticity without having to lug useless weight.
And so through a thousand processes.
The farmer makes too complex an affair out of his daily work. I believe
that the average farmer puts to a really useful purpose only about 5 per
cent of the energy that he spends. If any one ever equipped a factory in
the style, say, the average farm is fitted out, the place would be
cluttered with men. The worst factory in Europe is hardly as bad as the
average farm barn. Power is utilized to the least possible degree. Not
only is everything done by hand, but seldom is a thought given to
logical arrangement. A farmer doing his chores will walk up and down a
rickety ladder a dozen times. He will carry water for years instead of
putting in a few lengths of pipe. His whole idea, when there is extra
work to do, is to hire extra men. He thinks of putting money into
improvements as an expense. Farm products at their lowest prices are
dearer than they ought to be. Farm profits at their highest are lower
than they ought to be. It is waste motion--waste effort--that makes farm
prices high and profits low.
On my own farm at Dearborn we do everything by machinery. We have
eliminated a great number of wastes, but we have not as yet touched on
real economy. We have not yet been able to put in five or ten years of
intense night-and-day study to discover what really ought to be done. We
have left more undone than we have done. Yet at no time--no matter what
the value of crops--have we failed to turn a first-class profit. We are
not farmers--we are industrialists on the farm. The moment the farmer
considers himself as an industrialist, with a horror of waste either in
material or in men, then we are going to have farm products so
low-priced that all will have enough to eat, and the profits will be so
satisfactory that farming will be considered as among the least
hazardous and most profitable of occupations.
Lack of knowledge of what is going on and lack of knowledge of what the
job really is and the best way of doing it are the reasons why farming
is thought not to pay. Nothing could pay the way farming is conducted.
The farmer follows luck and his forefathers. He does not know how
economically to produce, and he does not know how to market. A
manufacturer who knew how neither to produce nor to market would not
long stay in business. That the farmer can stay on shows how wonderfully
profitable farming can be.
The way to attain low-priced, high-volume production in the factory or
on the farm--and low-priced, high-volume production means plenty for
everyone--is quite simple. The trouble is that the general tendency is
to complicate very simple affairs. Take, for an instance, an
"improvement."
When we talk about improvements usually we have in mind some change in a
product. An "improved" product is one that has been changed. That is not
my idea. I do not believe in starting to make until I have discovered
the best possible thing. This, of course, does not mean that a product
should never be changed, but I think that it will be found more
economical in the end not even to try to produce an article until you
have fully satisfied yourself that utility, design, and material are the
best. If your researches do not give you that confidence, then keep
right on searching until you find confidence. The place to start
manufacturing is with the article. The factory, the organization, the
selling, and the financial plans will shape themselves to the article.
You will have a cutting, edge on your business chisel and in the end you
will save time. Rushing into manufacturing without being certain of the
product is the unrecognized cause of many business failures. People seem
to think that the big thing is the factory or the store or the financial
backing or the management. The big thing is the product, and any hurry
in getting into fabrication before designs are completed is just so much
waste time. I spent twelve years before I had a Model T--which is what
is known to-day as the Ford car--that suited me. We did not attempt to
go into real production until we had a real product. That product has
not been essentially changed.
We are constantly experimenting with new ideas. If you travel the roads
in the neighbourhood of Dearborn you can find all sorts of models of
Ford cars. They are experimental cars--they are not new models. I do not
believe in letting any good idea get by me, but I will not quickly
decide whether an idea is good or bad. If an idea seems good or seems
even to have possibilities, I believe in doing whatever is necessary to
test out the idea from every angle. But testing out the idea is
something very different from making a change in the car. Where most
manufacturers find themselves quicker to make a change in the product
than in the method of manufacturing--we follow exactly the opposite
course.
Our big changes have been in methods of manufacturing. They never stand
still. I believe that there is hardly a single operation in the making
of our car that is the same as when we made our first car of the present
model. That is why we make them so cheaply. The few changes that have
been made in the car have been in the direction of convenience in use or
where we found that a change in design might give added strength. The
materials in the car change as we learn more and more about materials.
Also we do not want to be held up in production or have the expense of
production increased by any possible shortage in a particular material,
so we have for most parts worked out substitute materials. Vanadium
steel, for instance, is our principal steel. With it we can get the
greatest strength with the least weight, but it would not be good
business to let our whole future depend upon being able to get vanadium
steel. We have worked out a substitute. All our steels are special, but
for every one of them we have at least one, and sometimes several, fully
proved and tested substitutes. And so on through all of our materials
and likewise with our parts. In the beginning we made very few of our
parts and none of our motors. Now we make all our motors and most of our
parts because we find it cheaper to do so. But also we aim to make some
of every part so that we cannot be caught in any market emergency or be
crippled by some outside manufacturer being unable to fill his orders.
The prices on glass were run up outrageously high during the war; we are
among the largest users of glass in the country. Now we are putting up
our own glass factory. If we had devoted all of this energy to making
changes in the product we should be nowhere; but by not changing the
product we are able to give our energy to the improvement of the making.
The principal part of a chisel is the cutting edge. If there is a single
principle on which our business rests it is that. It makes no difference
how finely made a chisel is or what splendid steel it has in it or how
well it is forged--if it has no cutting edge it is not a chisel. It is
just a piece of metal. All of which being translated means that it is
what a thing does--not what it is supposed to do--that matters. What is
the use of putting a tremendous force behind a blunt chisel if a light
blow on a sharp chisel will do the work? The chisel is there to cut, not
to be hammered. The hammering is only incidental to the job. So if we
want to work why not concentrate on the work and do it in the quickest
possible fashion? The cutting edge of merchandising is the point where
the product touches the consumer. An unsatisfactory product is one that
has a dull cutting edge. A lot of waste effort is needed to put it
through. The cutting edge of a factory is the man and the machine on the
job. If the man is not right the machine cannot be; if the machine is
not right the man cannot be. For any one to be required to use more
force than is absolutely necessary for the job in hand is waste.
The essence of my idea then is that waste and greed block the delivery
of true service. Both waste and greed are unnecessary. Waste is due
largely to not understanding what one does, or being careless in doing
of it. Greed is merely a species of nearsightedness. I have striven
toward manufacturing with a minimum of waste, both of materials and of
human effort, and then toward distribution at a minimum of profit,
depending for the total profit upon the volume of distribution. In the