On the old way of working, one man at Ford’s Highland Park plant could assemble a flywheel magneto, part of the Model T’s ignition, in about twenty minutes.
Around April 1, 1913, Ford’s engineers took that one job and split it into 29 operations, each done by a different man. Assembly time dropped to 13 minutes and 10 seconds. With more adjustments, it reached five.
They moved on to the chassis. Built on a stationary stand, a chassis had taken 12 hours and 28 minutes at best. On a moving line, by early 1914, it took one hour and 33 minutes.
The numbers on the factory floor were thrilling. The numbers in the personnel office were not.
By late 1913, labor turnover at Ford had reached 380%. People quit so often that to grow the workforce by 100 men, the company had to hire 963. Ford later wrote that he had needed to hire about 53,000 people a year just to keep a steady force of 14,000.
In January 1914, Ford announced a minimum of five dollars for an eight-hour day. The old rate had been $2.34 for nine hours. A crowd of job seekers gathered outside the Highland Park gates. There was a catch: the new pay went only to workers judged “qualified” after the company looked into their private lives.
The money worked. In 1915, by Ford’s own count, the company had to hire only 6,508 men.