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In 1914 - Henry Ford perfected a system for manufacturing automobiles by the assembly line. In the 1920s - most major industries adopted the assembly line and realized major gains in worker productivity.

Ford had been trying to increase his factories' productivity for years. The workers who built his Model N cars (the Model T's predecessor) arranged the parts in a row on the floor, put the under-construction auto on skids and dragged it down the line as they worked.

While Henry Ford is often credited for creating the assembly line, he did not. He merely improved and innovated on it. He found the idea for the assembly line from another Michigan based automobile company run by Ransom Olds1.

The assembly line sped up the manufacturing process dramatically. It allowed factories to churn out products at a remarkable rate, and also managed to reduce labor hours necessary to complete a productbenefiting many workers who used to spend 10 to 12 hours a day in the factory trying to meet quotas.

During the 1920s, revolutionary mass-production techniques enabled American workers to produce more goods in less time. Because of this, the economy boomed. The automobile industry played a major role in the boom. Carmaker Henry Ford introduced new methods and ideas that changed the way manufactured goods were made.

He and his team looked at other industries and found four principles that would further their goal: interchangeable parts, continuous flow, division of labor, and reducing wasted effort. Using interchangeable parts meant making the individual pieces of the car the same every time.

The principles of assembly are these: (1) Place the tools and the men in the sequence of the operation so that each component part shall travel the least possible distance while in the process of finishing.