Fordism: the assembly line and mass production

In one line

Fordism is producing a standardized product in large runs, with interchangeable parts, tasks reduced to elementary movements and an assembly line that sets the pace.

What it is

According to Bellon Álvarez, who follows Coriat, Fordism comes after Taylor with Ford's assembly line and has three features: the worker's motion, already reduced to elementary movements by scientific management, is subjected to regulated cadences; the standardization of parts, tools and products makes production in large runs possible; and mass production upends the wage and consumption environment. At the Highland Park plant in Detroit, Ford applied time study, task standardization and systematic planning, and put the first assembly line into practice.

Zuccarino, citing De la Garza Toledo, sums it up as a process with a system of machines on a continuous line, fragmented work organization with control of times and movements, and mass production and consumption. He adds the social dimension: Fordism brought a new production norm (the mechanization of assembly lines) together with mass consumption norms, because wage earners began to buy durable goods.

How the work is organized

• Rigorous standardization of practices, parts and products.
• Strict separation between conception (methods, organization) and manual manufacturing.
• Norms built into the machine: unlike Taylorism, its rules end up inside an automatic system of machines, that is, the line itself imposes the pace.
• Fragmented work: each operator does a minimal fraction of the product, instead of one person doing everything.
• Control through supervision and pay tied to performance; according to Zuccarino, even competition among peers is encouraged.

Real example

Zuccarino studies Bolivian workers affiliated with the Federación Obrera Local (FOL, the Local Workers' Federation) during the 1920s and 1930s, when they were moving from a craft regime to an industrial one. Their testimonies show typically Fordist features: surveillance of workers by foremen, a search for operators with little education, competition among the workers themselves and a logic of traditional opposition between capital and labor. It is a useful example because it shows that Fordism was not just line technology: it was also a form of discipline and of labor relations.

On the other side of the story, Niebel and Freivalds report that Toyota considered it dangerous to blindly follow Ford's mass production system, which worked well in periods of high growth, once the priority became cutting waste and costs.

Benefits

• Very low unit costs at high volumes.
• High and predictable productivity.
• Routines that are simple to learn: you can bring people on board quickly.

Limitations to keep in mind

• Inflexibility: Bellon Álvarez explains that Fordism went into crisis when the market demanded goods better suited to its needs, something that clashes with the standardization principle that sustains it.
• Repetitive tasks with no room for initiative: Yates, Lewchuk and Steward, cited by Bellon Álvarez, speak of a "despotic Taylorism" that does not take advantage of the knowledge employees have about the process.
• The cost of gigantism and of rigid techniques when demand is uncertain (Zuccarino, on the explanations of its crisis).

In summary

Fordism is Taylorism turned into an assembly line and mass production. It explains why long runs, interchangeable parts and mass consumption exist, and also why an alternative appeared: Toyotism, designed to produce few units of many models.