Fordisme Management and management style

Question

Hi all the comunity here,We have been given a task of writing about the "Fordism, Japanese management style, and analysis"Would you be kind enough and refer me to some useful recource inforamtion "websites, newspapers, article... ) Thank you for your help.M. London

Feebs11 · Accepted Answer

Have you tried an internet search yourself?

Anonymous · Answer

Hi,

Thank you for your quick answer. I already tried and I'm still trying to find specific articles (latest) about Henry ford contribution to management and the Japanese style of management, untill now I haven't find much information close to the subject. Probably I have have to change the way I use to look for this infomation. I would be very pleased If you have or any one could send me some relevant links / text books /.... (below my e-mail)

Thanks,

Email Removed">Email Removed

Feebs11 · Answer

Try here: http://tinyurl.com/2ncry5 and here: http://tinyurl.com/32anu2

You may be having a problem with your spelling of "Fordism".

I found these at once with a search for "Fordism management Japanese"

Anonymous · Answer

Feebs11,

Thank you, that was helpful.

Below is the first part of my essay, I'll appreciate if some one could have some few minutes and to comment/correct or give an opinion.

Thanks to all.

-----------------------

Henry Ford¹ (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_juillet http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/1863 in http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dearborn, http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan, http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tats-Unis - http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947) Mechanical Engineer, is the founder of http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Motor_Company. He was behind what was called in the XXI century http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordisme, organizational methods applied to the industry field which had extremely dramatic effects.

In this essay we try to give a brief description of the “Fordism”; analyse its both aspects negative and positive and how is related to the Japanese style of management in 1980s.

Ford Motor Company, established in 1907 in order to create a car for the great multitude [2]. Although not as much expensive as the most cars of that time, the Model T, first car made by ford in 1908, was not affordable for many. In order to lower the price, improving the efficiency had become key factor. Inspired from other industries, Henry Ford came up with four principles: “interchangeable parts, continuous flow, division of labour, and reducing wasted effort” [2]. Interchangeable parts meant producing single pieces of the car by improving and adjusting machinery and cutting tools so a low-skilled labour could operate them. Improving the flow by bringing the work to the workers, dividing labour and breaking down the assembly of the car into 84 distinct steps, each worker was trained to do just one step.

Frederic Taylor, the creator of the scientific management, was hired to study and establish an efficient way the system could be run in order to save time and speed up the production. In 1913 the first moving assembly line was created. The assembly line meant mass-production which helped to lower the price of the car and hence the selling/profit increased, made the car affordable, and raised employees’ wages which made them potential consumers.

In term of added value, Ford’s four principles had many benefits at that time and were adopted by other industries [5]. First, dividing the job to smaller tasks may leads to better quality as the worker become more efficient in doing it. Second, as each worker does a single task in the assembly-line transfer time between tasks may decrease. Third, the more narrowly defined the task is, the easier it may be to develop specialized equipment to assist with it. Fourth, any employee is easily replaceable as it is easy to train new one at low cost. Fifth, as in America skilled labour was excessively scarce and expensive, it seemed worthwhile to adopt production strategies that used skilled labour as less as possible and, Ford could employ unskilled workers instead of the highly skilled craftsmen [6].

However, Ford’s mass production system, with highly hierarchical control used in Henry ford production units, which support Taylor’s thinking about management was accused not to take into consideration human affairs and emotions, using humans as robots manipulated by their leaders’ (Hersey p.84). Among the reasons to being criticized, are boredom, dissatisfaction and monotony set in [3], poorly motivated workers with resulting high labour turnover. The job may be so specialized that it offers no challenge or stimulation, absenteeism rises and the quality of work affected [5]. Many workers left their assembly line jobs due to the stress and monotony at work and repetitive increase in production quotas.

What made Henry ford more than doubled the workers’ wages exceeding the market standard by a half at least in that time?

Firstly to overcome the last mentioned problem, secondly was the vulnerability of assembly line to direct “sabotage” action of a sulky worker which could bring chaos to the mass production. Thirdly, the American Federation of Labor's more radical union competitor, so in order to decrease the possibility that strike hit the company [7].

In addition, some benefits may not always occur. For example, a study carried out at Maytag Corporation showed that the time spent moving work-in process from one worker to another was greater than the time needed for the same individual move to the other job [5]. Hence, extreme specialisation does not always go along with efficiency especially for small organisations. Fordism proved especially suitable to manufacturing in economies of scale, and required only rare innovation for new products and used machines that only made specific goods [6]. “ The realization of these economies of scale required the highest output and the lowest practicible prices to make sure that the output could be sold” [6]. As a result low-quality product, low-value and price based competition.

In 1930, the US market was saturated and Ford’s business started a recession step in favour to his competitors, mainly due to lack of continuous innovation plan. The model T supposed to remain unchangeable due to ideological and production based factors [6]

Fordisme Management and management style

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