Assembly Line and Ford Essay

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Pages: 9
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Henry ford assembly line
1. Introduction
a. Competitive advantage
i. Effective use of resources
Ford’s resources are mainly the materials, the facilities, and the staff. He managed to make the most use of these resources to create a competitive advantage. He controlled all of these aspects to insure the most effective use of them. He did that by owning the supply chain, building a big and innovative facility and designed a system that would increase both efficiency and effectiveness, and this system imposed control of the staff working in the facility. ii. Satisfying customer needs
Customer needs at that time was mainly an easy-to-use car that they could buy with an affordable price. This is exactly what Ford was capable of achieving through his assembly line system which introduced the Model T to the customers. iii. Building competences and Capabilities
The assembly line which made it possible to control people’s behaviour, decrease uncertainty, standardize the production system, increase productivity, and decrease the cost of production was for sure a main source of competitive advantage for Ford.
b. 4 V’s
Volume: The assembly line made it possible to produce in high volumes (reaching 2000 cars a day). This created high repeatability, low unit cost, and systemization.
Variety: Ford controlled the variety of his product and limited it to one type. This very low variety made it possible to standardize the whole production system and created the assembly line.
Variation: There a low variation of demand, it was steadily increasing as price went lower and more people becoming able to afford buying a car. The production process was stable and routine.
Visibility: Ford made sure that his production facility is only restricted to his employees only creating a low visibility for his operations.
c. Operations objectives
Quality: One of the main objectives of the assembly line was to eliminate the judgement made by the employee during performing his job. This aimed at insuring the quality of the products being produced. Ford had also owned the supply chain to insure the quality of the supplied materials.
Speed: The assembly line increased the throughput rate of the operation creating a high speed process. Employee’s speed of doing a required task was controlled by the speed of the machine they are working on. This machine is usually a single-purpose machine that only does a small part of the process.
Dependability: Ford achieved high dependability through owning the supply chain to insure that he gets what he wants to produce and on time. This made his final product reach the market on time also.
Flexibility: The operation was not flexible due to the high specialization and standardization of work that was influenced.
Cost: Ford’s Assembly line was able to decrease the cost of the car produced through creating high efficiency, standardization, and elimination of waste.

2. Process Design
a. Process Type: Mass/continuous process
The assembly line that Ford created is a process that lies between being mass process and continuous process. Being a mass process, it was a highly standardized process with standardized tasks, producing a high volume of production, consisted of repetitive activities, and it was largely predictable. Being a continuous process, it offered a very low variety of products (1 model), was high capital intensive and is considered a very inflexible operation.
b. Layout: Product layout
The layout of Ford’s assembly line is mainly a product layout. The whole transformation process is designed to accommodate the product. In the assembly line, material and unfinished parts flow from one stage to another being transformed using machines and workers.

3. Job design (efficiency and effectiveness through control)
Ford’s was obsessed with control, actually he was obsessed with creating efficiency and effectiveness through control; this appears in the way he designed the system.
a. Division of labour (emphasis on managerial
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