1st Edition
The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work Henry Ford's Universal Code for World-Class Success
Henry Ford's industrial innovations were directly responsible for the transformation of the United States into the most productive, affluent, and powerful nation on Earth. My Life and Work describes exactly how Ford did this in terms of not only manufacturing science, but also economics and organizational behavior. This holistic approach, and its validation by world-class results, make Ford's original work the best business leadership book ever written. The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work: Henry Ford's Universal Code for World-Class Success updates this original with modern perspectives that explain and organize Ford’s thought process explicitly.
My Life and Work is not a mechanistic or industry-specific formula that practitioners can follow like work instructions in a factory, but rather a holistic synergy of impartial laws of economics, science, and human behavior—a synergy that Ford called the universal code. This universal code simultaneously delivered high profits, high wages, and low prices in every industry to which Ford applied it. It also realized unprecedented improvements in industries ranging from coal mines to railroads, and even healthcare as practiced in the Henry and Clara Ford Hospital.
This annotated edition introduces Ford’s universal code along with vital economic, behavioral, Lean manufacturing, and customer service principles. It contains almost all the material of the original, plus more than 30 percent new content that reinforces Ford’s timeless principles.
Readers who understand and internalize Ford’s universal code can easily overcome the self-limiting paradigms that afflict today’s organizations. These include, for example, the belief that healthcare is a zero-sum game in which escalating costs are the price of quality. The book illustrates the basic elements of what is now called the Toyota Production System as well as the organizational and human relations principles needed to gain buy-in and engagement from all participants.
Beginning of Business
Ford’s Inspiration: The Steam-Powered Road Engine
Clocks: The Inspiration for the Synchronized Moving Assembly Line
Horses as a Wasteful Source of Transportation
Ford on Nyet Engineers and Other Wet Blankets
How Reciprocating Motion Eliminates Waste
Material Selection in Design for Manufacturing
What I Learned about Business
Overcome Paradigms to Achieve Results
Customer Satisfaction Is a Key Selling Point
Stocks and Bonds Are Dangerous Business Illusions
Pay Attention to the Work, and Money Will Take Care of Itself
The Role of Reliability in Customer Satisfaction
Continuous Improvement (Kaizen)
Overcome Ingrained Habits to Achieve Continuous Improvement
Preconceived Ideas and Paradigms Are Obstacles to Success
Reduce Costs and Improve Quality to Expand a Market
A Cost Accounting System Is Not a Suicide Pact
Managerial or Engineering Economics
Starting the Real Business
Charge the Lowest Price Possible, and Not What the Market Will Bear
Ford and Auto Racing
Role of Supply Chain Management
Transportation Is a Major Source of Waste
Recognition of Customer Requirements
Quality and Reliability Are Key Selling Points
Do Not Add Unnecessary Middlemen
Secret of Manufacturing and Serving
Material Selection and Design for Reliability (DFR)
Standardization Holds Down Costs
Work for Continuous Cost Reduction
Improve the Productivity of the Individual Worker
The Importance of Reliability
Getting into Production
The Birth of the Assembly Line
Basic Job Design Principles
Subdivision of Labor
Ergonomics and the Adjustable Height Skillet
How to Run a Balanced Factory at (Almost) 100% Capacity
The Introduction of Cellular Manufacturing
Ignore the Nyet Engineers
Keep the Work in Continuous Motion, Avoid Batch Operations
Subdivide the Job to Eliminate Waste Motion
Automate Jobs and Reduce Material Transfer Distances
Ford’s Keynotes of Production
Machines and Men
Break Down Organizational Barriers
Authority Is Not Leadership
The Law of the Situation
Ford’s Hiring Practices
Do Not Allow the Cost Accounting System to Run the Factory
Frontline Workers Are the Best Guardians against Waste (Muda)
Visual Controls and Error-Proofing
Terror of the Machine
Characteristics of the Ideal Industrial Leader
Repetitive Motion Injury and Job Rotation
Employment of Disabled Workers
Rules and Regulations
Skills Inventory
Reduce Material Transportation Distances
Key Safety Principles
Wages
Capital and Labor Are Partners, Not Adversaries
The Business Must Create the Wages
Low Wages Stem from Waste
The Role of Wages in National Prosperity
The Five Dollar Work Day
Why Not Always Have Good Business?
Seasonal Industries
Economic Depressions
Wage Cuts: Proof of Managerial Incompetence
Opportunity Cost of Not Doing Business
What Is the "Industrial Idea"?
How Cheaply Can Things Be Made?
Speculation and Bubbles
How to Achieve Zero Inventory
Benchmarking
Use Lower Prices to Drive Lower Costs
Fancy Office Buildings Are Evidence of Waste
Standardization and Cost Reduction
Maintainability and Reliability as Selling Points
Identify and Eliminate Waste
Find a Use for Everything
How to Lose the Luddites
Take Profits Out of Waste, Not Employees or Customers
Money and Goods
Finance Begins in the Shop and Not the Bank
Borrowing (and Government Subsidies) Cannot Cure Bad Business
Beware of Complacency
Dysfunctional Effects of a Focus on Dividends
Wages Come before Dividends
Waste Includes the Cost of Idleness
Inventory: "Everything Has to Move In and Move Out"
Money: Master or Servant?
"Housecleaning" Does Not Mean Layoffs
Transportation and Cycle Time
Borrowing Cures the Symptoms But Not the Disease
The Role of the National Financial System
Finance Should Serve Industry
Money Is Not Wealth
Why Be Poor?
Put the Job First and Money Second
Waste Is the Primary Barrier to Production and Service
Hoarding as a Form of Waste
Seasonal Work and Cyclical Industries
The Obsolescence of the City
The Role of Energy in Wealth Creation
The Proper Role of Capital
Tractor and Power Farming
The Mechanization of Agriculture
Wasteful Transportation in Agriculture
Why Charity?
Industry Can Make Charity Unnecessary
Industry Removes the Need for Charity
The Henry Ford Trade School
The Henry and Clara Ford Hospital
No Free Lunch
The Role of Self-Reliance
Railroads
How Ford Turned DT&I Around
A Lesson in Waste Recognition
Avoid Wasteful Transportation
Things in General
Manufacturing an End to War
The Danger of Propaganda
Education Must Be Practical
Democracy and Industry
The Fallacies of Class Warfare
Labor Unrest and Strikes Should Be Unnecessary
Productivity Creates High-Wage Jobs
Strikes Always Fail
The Employer’s Duty to Address Root Causes of Labor Dissatisfaction
Sloganeering Is Not Leadership
The Employer and the Mandate of Heaven
Groupthink
The Right Leader Is the One Who Can Do the Job
What We May Expect
Prosperity Should Be within Everybody’s Reach
Focus on Service, and Profits Will Take Care of Themselves
A Restatement of Ford’s Basic Principles
Look for Multiple Product Uses
The Role of the Individual in the Advancement of Industry
Standardization as the Servant and Not the Master
The Need for Sustainable Manufacturing
Conclusion
References
Index
Biography
William A. Levinson (Author) , Henry Ford (Author) , Samuel Crowther (Author)
Any history lover would truly appreciate Henry Ford’s value to the automotive and industrial revolution. There are very valuable lessons from Ford’s experiences in improving productivity in manufacturing and health care industries. ... an excellent view of Henry Ford’s life and contributions during the industrial revolution. ... provides insight into business practices and a deeper understanding of his universal code for world-class success which was very applicable during that period. There are also useful guidelines as to how these principles can be applied to modern-time challenges.
—Nazanin Mehrooz, in PMI World Journal, Vol. II, Issue XI
