Ford told his workers that henceforth they would each do only one job on each car. He set up a row of sawhorses, and ordered the cars to be built on them. The workers were to walk past them doing their jobs on each in turn. This was his first assembly line, and like all firsts it had some problems. It was still faster, and because he made more cars in a day, he was effectively paying his workers less per car so they were cheaper. The workers still wasted a little time walking from station to station so he reorganized the line again. Instead of moving the men past the cars, he had the cars move past the men.
This was enough faster and cheaper that his market expanded and he was flooded with orders and needed a bigger space. That was his Piquette plant, which he had built right next to the train tracks so cars literally rolled right off of the line and on to waiting train cars. Inside there were also rails. People pulled wagons along these and the cars were built on the wagons. This was faster and cheaper still and he got more orders.
In a few years he hired architect Albert Kahn to design a new and bigger factory. This was the Highland Park plant, four stories tall with the bottom two entirely devoted to manufacture. The building is still there and it takes up an entire city block. The process of building a car took sixty-three minutes, with a new one started every five minutes. Cars were built on two lines, the one for the top half in the second story and the other for the bottom on the first floor. The two halves left the building separately. The top half came down a ramp, where it landed on the bottom and was secured.
By that time he was selling his cars at one-tenth the price the competition was offering and making a killing. He made so much money that he decided to pay his workers five times what other companies would pay for such work. He did this so his own workers could buy the cars they built.
Sales of Ford cars increased by the hundreds yearly and he increased the hours his factory was operating until it became clear that soon there wouldn't be enough hours in the day to meet the orders, so again Mr. Kahn was called in but this time ford had another new Idea, make the foundry, parts plant and assembly line one plant. It was built sticking out over the Rouge River so it was called the Rouge plant.
The Rouge River Plant covered several city blocks, train tracks ran through it. Coal, Iron ore, Pigment and Oil were literally dumped into one end and finished cars rolled out of several opening at the other. Some cares went right onto trains like the Piquette Plant. The factory has one opening per assembly line line pair, pairs were then and still are the standard method.
