Office 2010 Workflow: Developing Collaborative SolutionsPaperback, 21 July 2010

Henry Ford has been called the father of the automobile. Although he did not invent the car, he did devise a way to make them affordable. His novel idea: bring the work to the workers. Prior to this, cars were made one at a time, or each worker would move from car to car. The assembly line allowed workers, their tools, and their materials to stay in one place, and the cars were brought to the workers. This saved such an enormous amount of time that the cost of each vehicle was drastically reduced. I had the opportunity to visit an automobile plant, and the precision of the assembly line was utterly amazing. One area that particularly impressed me was the place where the wheels were being mounted. There was a person on each side of the car, and each had two chutes (one for the front wheel and one for the rear wheel) where wheels and tires were staged. If you looked up the chute, you could see 15 or so wheels ready for the next cars. What was amazing was that each car had different wheels and tires. Some were steel wheels; others were chrome or alloy. However, as the car approached the mounting area, the correct wheel and tire was presented at each of the four chutes. At the top of each chute were four groups of workers preparing the wheels and mounting the appropriate tires.