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Ever wonder why it took so long?

MaggieD

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The assembly line was invented by Henry Ford on Dec 1, 1913.[FONT=&quot] The first assembly line was invented for the production of the automobile, reducing the time of production from over 12 hours to 2.5 hours.[/FONT]
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I wonder how many jobs THAT innovation cost? Or might those job losses be offset by making the automobile more affordable thus ramping up production?

Well, THIS thread won’t get legs, but just happened to think about it. An assembly line seems so LOGICAL, it’s surprising it took so long to figure it out...

Discussion? Laughing out loud? Slow evening?
 

It's already been noted that America's low workforce participation rate is contrasted by the steadiness of our production - and that the reason for this is the automation of the workplace. Even Wal-Mart is about to roll out robots to do night-time shelf stocking. How many jobs will that cost?

This is why it ticks me off whenever I see someone complaining about immigrants (legal and otherwise) taking our jobs - sure, that happens...but the elephant in the room is automation.
 

At least it was done in America. The motive also was understood that you needed good jobs to create a middle class that could afford luxury items. If anything, he took people off the farm and put them in the factory building the machines, and the came back home with money in their pockets instead of a silo of grain they couldn’t sell until next spring.

We went from rivers to rails, and from rails to highways, from candles to electrification.

But today we allow a non-native labor force to exist that is way beyond today’s needs, where as in the industrial revolution we need people. Lots and lots of people.
 
"The Romans noticed that each part on the ship had a number and realized the Carthaginians were mass producing the large galleys from standardized and uniform parts. Rome copied the Carthaginian warship parts and began mass-producing those ships with their abundant lumber supplies and labor, and even made enhancements.

The Romans added a movable gang-plank, a corvus, to secure the enemy warships and allow their soldiers to board enemy ships. This is when Rome began beating Carthage at sea."

The reason we suck is we keep going in circles after people destroy the books and pull down the historical stonework.

Everything is cyclical.
 


A lot of things SEEM obvious looking back after they've proven successful and everyone knows about it.

The day before they were invented, not so much.


IMHO some of the greatest moments in genius are the things that make everyone go "why didn't I think of that??" but nobody else did think of it...
 

For me I think the week whacker as one of those "Why didn't I think of that?".

The inventor of the Weed Eater was George Ballas. Mr Ballas got the idea of the weed whacker from watching the car wash's whirling soapy brushes sweep grime from his car. He went home and tied some fishing line to a can and then hooked it up to a rotary lawn edger. And hence the Weed Whacker.
 

Along those same lines, I had heard that Ford believed the road to success for automobiles was to find a way to make them cheaper so one didn’t have to be upper class to afford one. Don’t know if that’s true, but the assembly line sure began to accomplish that goal.

Napoleon said:
Ford didn’t invent the assembly line.
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It was NOT Obama.
 
Whadda you know! This thread’s legs may be short, but it got some...

 
Napoleon said:
Ford didn’t invent the assembly line.
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Yes. Ford opened his first assembly line in 1913, Ransom E. Olds in 1901. Samuel Colt used his first assembly line to manufacture 1,000 revolvers for the US Army in 1845, just in time for the Mexican War. Phelps Dodge (no relation to the automotive company) founded in 1831, by 1833 used its first assembly line, in Yonkers NY on the Hudson River, to manufacture mining equipment for its own mines. They were not the first either. The use of assembly lines can be traced back in many historical cultures in many parts of the world, for manufacturing armaments, pottery for cooking and food and wine storage. The ancient Romans used assembly lines for making bricks, and shaping road stones.

Colt showed American industries the value to be had from assembly lines, expanding work forces from tens to hundreds. Increasing production, reducing production time, and reducing maintenance costs of finished products with standardized parts, all exponentially.

Perceptive on your part. It wasn't the guy who invented the wheel who was a genius, it was the guy who figured out how to mount a cart on wheels with an axel who was the genius.
 

Evolution. So obvious but it took studying a tiny isolated island to see it.
 
ecofarm said:
Evolution. So obvious but it took studying a tiny isolated island to see it.
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I think they did but did not have the drive or the vision to scale it up into commercial and economic viability. Not to mention funding the first paycheck to someone other than yourself.

It’s so nice to have a positive attitude thread!

Go kitty, go!
 

Adam Smith open his book wealth of nations talking about job specialization, telling it is faster, more productive and requires less workers. But such model was considered for low simple and low cost products that we know sells a lot, like pin/nail.

What I am writing now may not be true. It is just what I "feel" based on some spares information that I believe to have.

Before Ford it seems that some kind of products were considered only profitable by selling to upper class. Lat's face it, company that sell luxurious products like cars before Ford, only had to sell 1, 2 or 3 of their product in order to be profitable. Ford took the risk of the production line that takes quantity over quality and requires him to sell many more cars in order to be profitable. Despite producing more cars with assembling line requires less workers per car and less training and knowlodge from specialized workers, is the quantity and speed that makes it profitable so the factory itself has to work more to produce and sell as much as possible.

Making it short, nobody knew if a product like cars could be profitable (would sell enough)to compensate its lower price.

It is like the story about Germans photography cameras. There was many German high quality cameras manufactures before the war and some others tried to regain the market after the war. But a couple of decades after the war came the Japonese cameras companies, and their cheaper, simplified and faster production cameras for the mass kicked the over mechanic expensive and slower to produce German cameras out of the market. Germans factories were trying to revive the old good day of their pre-war industry, that was about prioritize quality and design over quantity and price.

Germany is still like this, but they specialized in high tech niche products and/or innovation. But Germany had the advantage long tame ago to have a high valuable money, that in one hand made it impossible to make cheaper cost products to compete with Americans and Japanese, but they where clever to use their high valuable money to buy machinery and technologies from these countries and create new technologies and innovation. Now Germany is the main supplier of niche machinery and technology to industries all over the world.

Now, the Ford case happened in America seems to be because in America there was much more people willing to take risk, experiment, etc. And the reason for that seems to be the easier loan credit, money had more value back then and costs in america was and still is cheaper overall. So people can fail many times and still be able to start again. While in Europe factories had a more conservative family business tradition, harder to get loans and the higher costs made it much harder to start again if failed.

Still today Germany is very phobic about taking risk and do things out of what they believe they are suppose to expect. Reason why Germany is very slow about change and decision making. A couple of Years ago trains station and supermarkets didn't accepted credit card and in most towns it is still not possible to shop with electronic cards. Take loan in Germany is very hard and even start a business is crazy bureaucratic. You can't start a business just to try, if you get in you have to be sure you know what you are doing or have a very good backup plan.
 
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I love your comparison! Thank you. And I think you’re right.
 

While that's definitely a problem, it's by no means the main problem. Yes, foreigners have been, and are taking our jobs, but it's not really via immigration. It's offshoring our our manufacturing. You can only automate so much but having a job overseas equals zero jobs here, not just a reduction due to an advancement in automation.
 

Yeah, that makes sense. My pet peeve, which, of course, is many others, is call centers. So, I’m on the phone with a man who has a thick, what I assumed to be, Indian accent. His name was Bill. Hahahaha! After me saying many times, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” I finally said, “”Bill? Is it possible I could speak to Sanghi?” I try, but sometimes I just can’t help myself.
 

Yup...and that's just a small piece of the puzzle. What people also don't think about is national security. When we rely so much on other countries for products then losing them in a possible future war would be crippling. Especially when China is actually the real future threat to the US and so much of our stuff is built either by China or countries sitting right on their borders (e.g. Japan, Korea, ect). They will fall or be unreachable for our goods almost instantly.
 

If manufactures didn't move their factories to countries where they can have cheaper labor, staying in West Europe and North America, they would most probably be more automated instead of hiring expensive workers.

I was reading about the industrial revolution happening first in England and not in countries more modern, cheaper labor and more urbanized at the time like Germany, Netherlands and France where there was more liberal laws that in theory was much more favorable to have the first industrial revolution than England. But among other reason, one important reason was the expensive labor wages in England at the time, which motivated companies go after ideas and technologies instead.

Some European companies have been moving back their factories from China to Europe, replacing cheap Chinese labor to automation. The reason is that the cost of automation investment is higher to implant than cheap labor. But on the long run automation pays off as being more profitable.
 
C R O I X said:
If manufactures didn't move their factories to countries where they can have cheaper labor, staying in West Europe and North America, they would most probably be more automated instead of hiring expensive workers.
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Automation isn't a 100% culling of the work force. There will always be human workers for the foreseeable future. A manufacturing plant that fires half of it's labor force, due to automation, still employs the other half. The facility still needs to be built by construction workers. It still needs to be maintenance, both on the inside and the outside, which things like landscaping and such. It needs to be service/provided utilities like electricity, water, garbage. There are still a number of jobs to be had. You get zero if it's done in China or other countries.
 

That is also true - but I am not convinced that offshoring is the biggest cause - again, the steady level of production vis-a-vis the steady decrease in our labor participation rate...it doesn't take a genius to see that the only way that businesses maintain production stateside while cutting payroll is by becoming more efficient...and the biggest factor in becoming more efficient is by automation. When I refer to automation, it's not just robots on the production line - it's smaller and more capable administrative staffs thanks to computerization. It's more efficient distribution due to automation e.g. Wal-Mart's much-admired (and -hated) distribution system that automatically tracks purchases and uses that tracking system to automatically decide what to send to which store, and how soon. It's the USPS using electronic readers that look for the zip code and automatically routes the mail in a fraction of the time that a human-based system could. Heck, look at the dockyards - the dinosaur-looking container cranes are still human-operated...but they were designed that way to load and unload much faster...and greatly decrease the number of dockworkers needed to load and unload ships - it works wonderfully...but the cost was more jobs. Who's to blame? No one, really - it's a product of competition.

In other words, we're sorta like the frog in the pot that never seems to know how much warmer the water's getting - every business has to fight to succeed, and a big part of doing so is by becoming more efficient...and the best single way to become more efficient is by automating its processes in order to cut payroll.
 
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That is true, though many of these indirect jobs are temporary or seasonal jobs and some others indirect jobs are only generated along with many other plants (like garbage collecting). And most of these jobs can be automated, if not now in a near future.

I worked in the post distribution plant in Germany, where they collect all the parcels from the region to redistribute each for its region of its destination. Almost all of the work is automated. There are workers only to load and unload the parcels (hundreds of them but still a very small fraction of the number or workers it could have without automation, and I am talking about only 1 plant), and such load and unload work can easily be automated too. I heard the Adidas Plant in Germany is 100% automated. There are only engineers to deal with the machines.

The main point is, a plant that has its manufacture production 100% or near 100% automated generates a lot less employment than a plant not automated. Reason why Germany, a heavily industrial country, most by small and medium size familiar business, employs less today and have to create the MiniJob thing in order to generate jobs for the less skilled workers replaced by automation. But automation tend to increase and there will have no alternative to create jobs after a certain point.

But you are right that industries create many indirect jobs in the area where they are implanted. But they generate much more Jobs in China with less automation than in countries where invest in automation is worthier than hire people. Even the garbage collecting can be automated, and in Germany the garbage is separated before going to the bin so the garbage/recycling plant doesn't have much work to do it.

The only way to avoid automation is by have a cheap labor cost. And even that will not help 100% because expensive labor cost is not the only reason for automation.
 
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Well before that time, there wasnt necessarily the mechanization or power source to enable it to be cost effective. Or even work. And not a ton of mass-produced complex machinery.
 

Have you seen some of the robots who work at Walmart? You really have to get their attention to see if they are alive. I stood in an aisle for about 10 mins, just for jokes, and the guy moved a handful of items back and forth to look busy. Some of the workers have no clue that they are in the customers' way, even managers who seem to think they are more important than patrons, not to mention cashiers who act like we bother them with our mere existence.
Of course WM isn't the only store with that problem. What the heck happened to customer service?
If robots can do better, then by all means, bring them on. May be the lazy bums learn a lesson.
I can't stand people who think they don't have to perform or bring their lousy mood into the workplace.
 

It's what happens when you have a liberal society where people think they deserve jobs, they don't have to earn them.
 

The goal was to displace hominids, same with automation. Funny story, as farmers were pushed into cities for these "jobs" during the industrial revolution, many clearly saw and voiced the dangers of wage slavery. We've still yet to address that.
 
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