Friday, November 15, 2013

Ford Methods and Ford Shops - Book 1914 - Important Points



The first systematizer found that the Ford en-Bloc four cylinders casting traveled no less than 4000 feet in the course of finishing, a distance subsequently reduced to about 334 feet.  (p.38)

Missionary labors of Mr. Taylor and his disciples (p.39)  Ford shops are doing an unguessed cost-reducing service in showing how closely even the larger of small machine tools may be placed with no loss of per-hour efficiency. (p.39)

Visitors cannot find in the Ford shops any examples of orlhodox machine-tool placing  in generic  groups, lathes together in one place, drilling machines, willing milling  and planing machines each in a group by themselves. (p.39)

Brazing furnaces are in the natural production line of travel. (p.40)

In three days one has to become a first class moulder (p.41)

Henry Ford  "We must all live. If a man can make himself of any use at all, put him on, give him his
chance and if he tries to do the right thing we can find a living  for him anyway,"

This Ford labor policy must have given hope, most valuable of all human possessions. to many and many a despairing brain.


Next the shortage  chaser makes his 8.30 am report at the checker's office by 
writing  the same on his checker's office blackboard, 40 inches wide by 40 inches high, with 59 lines for writing  in chalk. (p.66)


The Ford en bloc four-cylinder casting form is very far from being a simple 
affair either in the foundry or in the machine shop.  
The cylinders receive twenty one inspections and gaugings in the course of finishing. The machining is so carefully conducted that less than one half of 1 per centof the cylinders are spoiled in machining. Somewhere about 8 per cent of the 
cylinders moulded are lost in the foundry.  

Should the fault be due to any workman's act, he is of course, duly informed and his faulty practice changed. (p.76)

Ford Cylinder Machining Operations (Pp.77-84)


The machine inspectors, one or more in each nmchinc-shop component-production department, move from one machine to another and note work in progress. There are about one hundred and twenty day
machine inspectors and about one hundred night machine inspectors. The machine inspector notes any fault in any operation in progress, and may either correct faulty tool-setting himself, or may call the department-foreman's attention to the fault, or may order a change of tools or may call a tool-setter to remedy a fault. Machine inspectors enough are placed in each department to cover all operations in that department at frequent interval, so that no faulty operation shall proceed for any great length of time. The
office of the machine inspector is highly  important and his powers are large and are exercised at discretion. (p.98)


In  Septcmber, 1913, the Ford car chassis assembling occupied 600 feet length of floor apace, and required 14 hours of one man's time to assemble one chassis standing still in one place while being assembled.

April 29.1914,with the chasis chain-driven while assembling, 1,212 Ford chassis were assembled on three parallel elevated-rail assembling lines, by 2,080 hours of labor, giving one chassis assembled for each 93
minutes of labor, as compared with 840 minutes of labor in September.
1013.

The stationery chassis too 600 feet in length.
floor space, while on moving chassis lines took only 300 foot long.

As for Ford motor assembling. In October, 1913, 9,900 labor hours were required to assemble 1,000 motors in one day, which gives 9 hours 54 minutes = 594 minutes for each motor assembled.  May 4, 1914,
l,003 motors, chain-driven on rails, were assembled with 3,976 labor hours, or '?38,500 minutes = 238,560 = 237 minutes and 52 seconds time for each motor-assembly completed, a saving of 356 minutes 8 seconds = 5 hours and 56 minutes per motor. In other words, more than 2 and half  motors were assembled  May 4, 1914, in the time it took to assemble 1 motor in the month of October, 1913, when the motor assembly was made by first-class American mechanics, working in what was believed by the Ford engineers in the ninth of October, 1913, to be the very best  manner possible.

The Ford shops are now making equally surprising gains by the installation of component-carrying  slides, or ways, on which components in process of finishing  slide by gravity  from the hand of one operation-performing Workman to the hand of the next operator.

All of this Ford practice is of great importance to manufacturers at large, because the Ford engineers assert that these improved methods of handling work by slide:, of moving assembles in progress, and of minutely dividing assembling operations, can be applied to any and all small-machine manufacturing, with very large reductions of labor-cost. (p.103)


The Ford engineers are now moving over 500 machine tools in the Highland Park shops, and are having a large number of new machine tools constructed, many of them showing striking novelties of design, in order to take full advantage of the new things they themselves have learned in the last ten or twelve months. (p.104)

The new Ford method of finishing the cylinder bores of small gas engines by a rolling process,  gives an excellent interior cylinder surface.  This method cylinder bore finishing costs but very little and is believed
to produce results far superior to those obtained by the  very best cylinder grinding practice and  at a small fraction of cylinder-bore grinding costs (p.104)


Piston and connecting-rod assembling, changed within the  last two montsh 14 men assemble 4000 pistons and connecting rods in 8 hour-day. Earlier 28 men were employed. No change whatever in the tools used, and in the ultimate operations performed (105 - how - is it motion study).

Finally the motor-assembling foreman analyzed the time with the stop-watch and found that 4 hours out of the 9-hour day were spent in walking — that is to say, in body movements of each assembler made by moving his feet.  He changed the operation and surrendered 14 men.

The old process and new process were explained in details (Pp.108 to 110)

Ford engineers are making efforts to bring the work at such a height that the workman can either stand or sit erect, any stoop being now well known to cause a marked reduction in the worker's output. (p. 111)

Previous to the installation of this moving magneto-assembling line, the Ford fly-wheel magneto had been a one-man assembly, each work- man on this job doing all the assembling of one fly-wheel magneto and
turning out from 35 to 40 completed assemblies per 9-hour day. The work was done by experienced men, but was not so uniformly satisfactory- as was desired, and was costly as a matter of course.

Forty assemblies per 9-hour day, best time for one-man work gives nearly 20 minutes time to each one.

The moving-assembly line was placed in work with 29 men, splitting the one-man operation into 29 operations, the 29 men began turning out 132 magneto assemblies per hour, or 1188 per 9-hour day,
one man's time producing one fly-wheel magneto assembly in 13 minutes 10 seconds, a saving of nearly 7 minutes time on each assembly, or more than  one-third of the best one-man time. (p. 112)

After improvements on March 1, 1914, 18 men assembled 1,175 magnetos in 8 hours in around 7 minutes of a man's time. After some time 14 men assembled 1,335 magnetos.


January 1. 1913, axle assembling, 150 minutes 

January 1, 1914, axle assembling, , 66 and half minutes. 
July 13, 1914. axle assembling, , 26 and half minutes 




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