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HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY, TECHNOLOGY, OBJECTS AROUND US
Stream production. History of invention and production
Directory / The history of technology, technology, objects around us Flow production is a progressive method of organizing production, characterized by the division of the production process into separate, relatively short operations performed on specially equipped, sequentially located workplaces - production lines. When ensuring the automatic movement of manufactured parts along the line, the line is called a conveyor. Conveyor - a continuous transport machine designed to move bulk, lumpy or piece goods. An important characteristic of the conveyor operation is its continuity. This is true both when a conveyor is a means for transporting goods over short distances, and when a conveyor is a flow production system based on a moving object for assembly. This system turned the process of assembling complex products, which previously required high qualifications from the assembler, into a routine, monotonous, low-skilled work, significantly increasing its productivity. The arrangement of workers or machines on the conveyor assembly line is carried out taking into account the technology and sequence of assembly or processing of parts in order to achieve an effective division of labor.
Most of the great inventions we have discussed above are in the field of technology. From time immemorial, technical improvements have revolutionized production, increasing labor productivity many times over. But the invention, which will be discussed in this chapter, is of a completely different nature - it is not from the field of technology and is, in essence, what is commonly called the scientific organization of labor. It turned out that this area of relations, which had not been paid due attention for a long time, was fraught with colossal opportunities and could produce a revolution in production, equal in importance to the introduction of a steam engine or electric motors. For the first time, the outstanding American entrepreneur and engineer Henry Ford demonstrated the great importance of the correct organization of labor in his factories. The son of a poor farmer, in a few years, thanks to a clear mind, cold calculation and brilliant intuition, he acquired a multi-million dollar fortune and became one of the richest people in the world. Ford was a brilliant engineer, a talented inventor, a virtuoso businessman and an original philosopher. But nevertheless, he became famous not for his inventive talents or business qualities, but for the fact that he developed, brought to life and brought to perfection the idea of mass in-line conveyor production. There is no doubt that the organization of in-line production is one of the greatest inventions of the 50th century, thanks to which humanity has received an unprecedented increase in material wealth over the past eighty years. With its widespread introduction, the industry of developed countries, as it were, reached a new, qualitatively different level and, in a few decades, turned out to be ready for the introduction of new high technologies - comprehensive mechanization, automation and robotization of production, that is, everything that the scientific and technological revolution brought 90-XNUMX years of our century.
It all started very modestly. In 1893, Henry Ford (then working as a mechanic for the Detroit Electric Company) assembled a gas-powered car. It was the first car in the city and one of the few in America. A few years later, Ford managed to organize the "Detroit Automobile Company", in which he took the post of chief engineer. The company launched the production of Ford-designed cars, but it did not go well, since Ford's voice did not have much weight at that time, and many issues were resolved contrary to his recommendations. In 1902, Ford resigned his post, left the company and plunged headlong into the design of a new car. When the car was ready, he competed and defeated American racing champion Alexander Winton. In 1903, he created a new racing car "999" - a real monster with an 80 hp engine. With this car, driver Barney Oldfield won the 1903 race, a full kilometer ahead of his rivals. These two remarkable victories brought Ford's cars to the attention of the business community. In the same year, the Ford Automobile Society was founded, in which Henry Ford was vice chairman, chief engineer and director. In subsequent years, Ford gradually bought up shares in the company. In 1906, he already had a controlling stake, and by 1919 - 92% of the shares. Moreover, for each share, which in 1903 cost only 100 dollars, he paid 1919 dollars in 12500, that is, the shares jumped in price by 15 times in 125 years! This spoke of a rare even by American standards, the commercial success of the enterprise. During the first year of the company's existence, 1700 cars were sold. At the time, this was considered a good indicator. Shareholders were pleased, but Ford himself thought that 1700 cars a year was ridiculously low. Even then, he dreamed of producing the same number of cars a day. These plans might seem groundless, yet they were based on accurate calculation. Moreover, Ford was sure that 1000-2000 cars produced per day were far from the limit, and that for a country like America; it is possible to produce 6-8 thousand and even 10 thousand cars a day! And they can not only be produced, but also successfully sold, making good money. At the beginning of the XNUMXth century, when the automobile was still a novelty, many looked at it as a pleasant, but extremely expensive toy, available only to the rich. Indeed, the cars produced in Europe at that time were very expensive, so that few could afford the pleasure of owning them. Automobile firms not only did not try to dispel this opinion, but, on the contrary, beat it in every possible way. The entire automotive business was oriented towards the upper strata of society: cars were refined and produced in small series. It was constantly emphasized that a car is a luxury or sport item, a necessary element of a cheerful, elegant and aristocratic life. Meanwhile, Ford's policy was in the opposite direction. From the very beginning, he tried to prove that the car is not a luxury, but a necessary item in the everyday life of a modern person. To make the car accessible to the widest strata of society, he constantly reduced the prices of his Fords, refusing momentary superprofits, for the sake of expanding sales. He did not want to chase fashion and did not want to release new models, because he believed that it was better to win the trust of customers by constantly improving the same model. He also believed that the commercial success of a particular model depends primarily not on the appearance of the car, but on how strong and durable each of its parts is and how comprehensive the manufacturer's service will be. At that time, most manufacturers, after the sale of a car, stopped all business with the buyer and were even somewhat interested in the fact that the car they sold deteriorated faster. Ford in no way held such views and paid great attention to the creation of a network of repair shops, the production of spare parts and the maintenance of already sold machines. Any buyer of his car was entitled to a number of services from the company in relation to repair and assistance in operation. However, Ford did not immediately succeed in bringing his plans to life. For several years, as already mentioned, he was not the full owner of the enterprise. There has not yet been a perfect model of a car, on the production of which one could concentrate all one's efforts. Only having received a controlling stake in his hands, Ford was able to turn around in full breadth. In 1908, the design of an inexpensive, but very reliable car was developed, which received the name of the "T" model. It did not contain a single new node, which in one form or another would not have already been tested in any of the previous models. New was only the material from which most of the machine parts were made - vanadium steel, which had amazing lightness and at the same time remarkable strength. This car made Ford a millionaire, a celebrity and one of the kings of American industry. Having created his perfect car, Ford decided from now on not to modernize it, but to focus on the mass production of this single model. His plans caused a stir among both the shareholders and the sales agents. Everyone unanimously said that the market requires diversity, and a single model will alienate a significant part of the buyers. To this, Ford confidently objected that 95% of buyers themselves do not know what they want, and if they inspire confidence in the new brand, they will not make any special claims. He spent a great deal of money on advertising, flooding the newspapers with ads proving that the Model T met all the demands that one could make of a perfect car. He constantly emphasized that his car was not for the rich, that it was for the "average" American, that it was a "family", "people's" car, and so on. All of these were completely new techniques in the automotive business. Until then, no one believed that it was possible to make an inexpensive but good car and that in general it was possible to find buyers for a car in wide circles of the urban and rural bourgeoisie. Ford was the first to prove that all this is possible. His portable, simple and cheap car, available to any average American, was the best fit for the times. By 1910, 10 thousand Ford Ts had already been sold, and in 1911-1912 - 34 thousand. Production was rapidly gaining momentum. Ford bought a large plot of land in the suburbs of Detroit, in Highland Park, and began building a huge factory here, designed to produce not thousands, but millions of cars. It was a completely new type of mass in-line production, which had never been used anywhere before on such a scale. It was Ford who first made the conveyor the main axis of the assembly process and developed a system for decomposing complex labor-intensive processes into component parts in a completely new way. He was the first to implement the idea of the cheapest, but mass-produced car. These were the three pillars on which the unprecedented prosperity of his enterprise was based. Ford's strength lay in the organization of work. All the processes in his factories, from the casting of parts to the screwing of an insignificant nut, were rationalized with such perfection that no one had ever achieved before him. The production flow moved from the sources of raw materials to the finished machine, never turning back. Initially, at the Highland Park plant, the assembly of cars was carried out with the help of work teams that moved around the workshop with hand trucks and brought the appropriate parts to each car for assembly. Assembly teams moved from one car to another and in this way assembled the entire car from start to finish. In the improved system, Ford left the workers immobile while the materials were pushed past them by hand. Soon a short line was set up for the final assembly of the machines, where the parts were moved past the workers by mechanical force. This system, with further improvement, turned into a conveyor.
The first experience with the assembly path was made in April 1913 on the assembly of a magneto. Prior to this, one worker could collect from 35 to 40 magnetos during nine hours of a working day, that is, he spent about 20 minutes on each. After the introduction of the conveyor, the time spent on assembling one magneto was reduced to 13 minutes. For several days, Ford stood near the working conveyor, watching every movement of the workers. He noticed that pickers had to bend over while working because the conveyor was too low. He stopped production and ordered the conveyor to be raised 8 inches. After that, the assembly time of one magneto was reduced to 7 minutes. New improvements have brought it to 5 minutes. Without spending money on new machines or materials, by simply decomposing the assembly process into 45 simple operations and moving the material past the stationary and standing in a fairly comfortable position, Ford achieved amazing results, increasing labor productivity by almost 4 times. Soon the conveyor was used in the assembly of the chassis. According to the old method, the assembly of one chassis required 12 hours and 8 minutes. When they tried to break it down into several simple operations and arranged a primitive conveyor (with the help of a rope and a chassis gate they pulled past the line of workers), the assembly was reduced to 5 hours and 50 minutes. Ford continued to improve the conveyor. Adjusting to the average height of the workers, he tried to lay prefabricated tracks at different heights. Its engineers worked to break down all complex processes into their component parts. Each worker had to do less and less variety of hand movements. As a result of all these improvements, the assembly time for one chassis has been reduced to 1 hour 33 minutes. At the same time, the process of division of labor was literally brought to the limit: if one worker drove in a bolt, then another put a nut, and a third screwed it up. The worker in Ford production has become a real appendage of the machine. On the conveyor during work, he could not take an extra step or movement. His tools had to be positioned so that he did not have to look for them or bend over for them. The rhythm of the assembly was stronger than the most ferocious overseers. Thanks to him, Ford achieved the maximum rate that could be achieved without compromising the quality of work. However, despite this, the unemployed from all over America sought to get to Ford, attracted by high wages. Since the production process was broken down into simple operations, Ford had little need for skilled workers. He willingly accepted people who were completely unskilled, ignorant, even crippled. Already in 1915, almost the first of the major industrialists, Ford introduced a 5-day work week and reduced the working day to 8 hours. However, the intensity of labor in his enterprises was so high that it was worth 10 hours of work in any other plant. Every second demanded complete dedication. For seven hours, the worker repeated the same movement countless times. Talking, smoking or sitting down during work was strictly prohibited. If someone needed to go out, he raised his finger and waited until the overseer sent a deputy to take his place. During the break, which lasted only 15 minutes, carts loaded with bags of standard breakfasts, which included three sandwiches, a piece of sweet pie, an apple or an orange, drove into the workshop from different directions. Workers ate right at the machine - it was forbidden to leave the workshop without special permission.
The success of the conveyor assembly was so obvious that after a while this system was transferred to all workshops of the Ford plant. All the enterprises involved in Ford's production also had to switch to the in-line method. Having once bought a glass factory, Ford suggested that local specialists produce mirror glass for cars in a continuous wide belt, without the help of manual labor, mechanizing all processes from start to finish. Experts and specialists have categorically stated that it is technically impossible to change the production method. Then Ford sent people to the factory who had never worked in the glass business before. A year later, his engineers developed a brilliant method for the complete mechanization of production. Conveyors and new machines were installed throughout the plant. As a result, the plant began to produce 1 million square meters of first-class mirror glass per year. Its area compared to other glass factories was half as much, and its productivity was twice as large. After the reorganization, this enterprise began to save Ford $ 3 million a year. Having rebuilt all production and continuously increasing its volumes, Ford achieved his longed-for dream in a few years - every day 10 thousand cars were produced at all his factories, and all of them found sales. Largely thanks to Ford, the car became a national feature of America. If in 1900 in the USA there was one car for every 9000 people, then in 1929 it was one car for every 5 people. In total, by this time, 26 million standard Ford Ts were running along the roads of America, differing only in color and body shape. The USA had several times more cars than all the rest of the world put together, and the owners of cars here were not only the rich, not only the middle class, but also many workers and farmers. This circumstance changed the face of the country itself. If in 1893 American roads were considered almost the worst in the world, then after some 20-30 years excellent highways were laid everywhere, along which a stream of cars moved in both directions. Almost all cars were assembled at Ford factories. A production of this magnitude presented Ford with many challenges. So, for example, Ford had to abandon the idea of making all its cars in Detroit, as this would create intractable transportation problems. Instead, he scattered his assembly plants around the world, which produced as many machines from finished parts as it was possible to sell in this place. It turned out to be more profitable to transport cars in disassembled form. One freight car could, for example, accommodate only 7 finished cars. In disassembled form, 130 cars could be loaded into it, that is, instead of 18 cars, only one was used. Thanks to a well-oiled organization, Ford was able to reduce the production cycle from 21 to 14 days. (The production cycle is the period during which the money invested in any enterprise remains tied up, it includes the time from the purchase of raw materials to the sale of the finished car.) Thus, Ford was able to maintain a high level of production with two-thirds of the former capital . With the huge scale of its activities, this meant tens of millions of dollars in savings per year. For two decades, Ford reigned supreme in the cheap car market. None of his competitors could give a car of equal quality for the same price. "Ford T" has taken a special position among the cars of other companies. Having conquered the American market, Ford moved his cars to Europe. At first, European car firms looked down on his nondescript and low-key cars, but they soon realized that they had greatly underestimated this competitor. At all races and rallies, Fords demonstrated amazing reliability and excellent driving performance, while their price was an order of magnitude lower than that of European cars. The middle class in Europe, as well as in America, could not resist the temptation to have their own, if not luxurious, but reliable and unpretentious car. In almost all countries of the world, Ford branches, representative offices and assembly shops soon appeared. Large car factories were built in Canada and Manchester, and a tractor factory was built in Cork. The efficiency of using the conveyor in the technological process of any production depends on how the type and parameters of the selected conveyor correspond to the properties of the cargo and the conditions in which the technological process takes place. These conditions include: productivity, length of transportation, the shape of the route and the direction of movement (horizontal, inclined, vertical, combined; conditions for loading and unloading the conveyor; cargo dimensions, its shape, specific gravity, lumpiness, humidity, temperature, etc.). The rhythm and intensity of delivery and various local factors also matter. High productivity, simple design and relatively low cost, the ability to perform various technological operations on the conveyor, low labor intensity of work, ensuring labor safety, improving its conditions - all this contributed to the widespread use of the conveyor. It was used in all areas of the economy: in ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, mechanical engineering, mining, chemical, food and other industries. In industrial production, conveyors are an integral part of the technological process. Conveyors allow you to set and regulate the pace of production, ensure its rhythm, being the main means of complex mechanization of transport and handling processes and flow technological operations. The use of a conveyor frees workers from heavy and labor-intensive transport and loading and unloading operations, making their work more productive. Wide conveyorization is one of the characteristic features of developed industrial production. At the same time, in the automotive industry, which at one time was the first to use conveyor assembly, at the end of the XNUMXth century. there was a return to the old methods of production. Some firms began to entrust the full cycle of assembling a car to one team of assemblers. This is due to the fact that at a high rate of movement of the conveyor, marriage is inevitable, which is not always noticed and corrected at the end of the assembly cycle. Such flaws are noticeable only during the operation of the car by the owner. Their discovery entails both monetary losses and damage to the prestige of the manufacturer. Author: Ryzhov K.V.
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