REPETITIVE MANUFACTURING: The backbone of efficient production

Part 2 of Manufacturing History: The Road STILL Traveled??

Introduction?

Several people have asked me to group the individual posts into longer articles. This article on Repetitive Manufacturing results from those requests and is the second in that series.??The first, on Job Shop Manufacturing, can be found here https://www.dhirubhai.net/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7085299961600335872/ ?

Repetitive Manufacturing embodies a timeless concept in the manufacturing process. When envisioning manufacturing, one often imagines a streamlined assembly line, with products seamlessly flowing one after another. This repetitive process thrives on maintaining a consistent production rate, operating tirelessly 24/7 to meet customer demand in the market. Widely adopted in the automotive industry, it offers numerous advantages.

One of the key benefits of Repetitive Manufacturing lies in its cost efficiency. Manufacturers can significantly reduce production costs by producing products or components in large volumes. Additionally, scheduling becomes a breeze in this method, and performance visibility is readily accessible for close monitoring.

The assembly line, hailed as one of the most remarkable innovations of the 20th century, has exerted a profound influence on the industrial landscape. Its impact was so profound that businesses failing to embrace this practice faced extinction. Moreover, the assembly line serves as the foundation for Repetitive Manufacturing, driving efficiency and integration of automobiles into American society.

Through history, we can examine the evolution of Repetitive manufacturing and its continued relevance in today's fast-paced industrial environment.

The Venetian Arsenal: Pioneering Mass Production Before the Industrial Revolution

Our discovery of Repetitive Manufacturing starts with the Venetian Arsenal, or Arsenale di Venezia, a shipyard and armory complex in Venice, Italy. Established in the 12th century during Venice's republican era, it became Europe's largest industrial complex before the Industrial Revolution. Initially serving as a dockyard for maintaining privately constructed naval ships, the Arsenal underwent expansion with the construction of the Arsenale Nuovo in 1320. This enlargement facilitated the simultaneous construction and maintenance of the state's navy and larger merchant vessels within a single location.

Encompassing an impressive 45-hectare area, the Arsenal was a fortified space shielded from public view, with guards safeguarding its perimeter. Various specialized areas within the Arsenal were dedicated to producing prefabricated ship parts, munitions, rope, and rigging. This unique approach allowed for the rapid assembly of ships, with the Arsenal boasting an astonishing capability of completing one vessel per day during its prime.

The Venetian Arsenal used innovation to transform the shipbuilding industry. The Arsenal pioneered the frame-first system, which replaced the traditional Roman hull-first practice. This novel approach significantly accelerated ship production and minimized the amount of wood required. The Arsenal introduced standardized parts and assembly-line methods, foreshadowing the production techniques that would later characterize the Industrial Revolution. In the early 16th century, when the Arsenal was at its peak efficiency, it employed approximately 16,000 individuals who demonstrated an incredible ability to produce nearly one ship daily.

The Arsenal's influence extended far beyond its impressive shipbuilding capabilities. By revolutionizing shipbuilding and adopting innovative production techniques, the Arsenal became a center of mass production long before the advent of the Industrial Revolution. It became the primary producer of Venice's maritime trading vessels, contributing significantly to the city's economic wealth and power. The Venetian Arsenal is an excellent example of early industrialization and the transformative power of innovation in shaping societies and economies.

Eli Whitney and Interchangeable parts

Although the concept of interchangeable parts was initially promoted in Europe by French gunsmith Honoré LeBlanc and later by English naval engineer Samuel Bentham, it was not until Eli Whitney introduced the idea in the United States that it gained significant traction. Eli Whitney (1765-1825), a Massachusetts native, was an inventor, mechanical engineer, and manufacturer, best known as the creator of the cotton gin. However, his most notable contribution lies in his application of interchangeable parts in the firearms industry, which revolutionized manufacturing practices and replaced the traditional craftsmanship of the 18th and 19th centuries.

In 1797, faced with the threat of war with France, the government sought to procure 40,000 muskets from private contractors, as the national armories had only managed to produce 1,000 muskets in three years. Surprisingly, 26 contractors submitted bids for a total of 30,200 muskets. Like the government armories, these contractors followed the conventional method, where skilled craftsmen individually fashioned each musket, meticulously forming and fitting every part. Consequently, each weapon was unique, and a specially made replacement was required if a part broke.

Breaking tradition, Whitney presented a plan to supply 10,000 muskets within two years. He devised machine tools that allowed unskilled workers to manufacture specific parts that precisely matched a model, ensuring uniformity among the components. The sum of these interchangeable parts constituted a musket, where any part would fit any musket of the same design. Whitney had grasped the concept of interchangeability, stating, "The tools which I contemplate making are similar to an engraving on a copper plate from which a great number of perceptibly alike impressions may be taken."

However, it took more than ten years for Whitney to deliver the promised muskets. Whitney managed to overcome growing skepticism in 1801. In Washington, D.C., before President-elect Thomas Jefferson and other officials, they randomly selected parts and successfully assembled complete muskets from piles of disassembled muskets. This moment marked the inauguration of the American system of mass production, and Whitney's perseverance and innovation were acknowledged by all in attendance.

Revolutionizing the Meat Industry: From Packinghouses to Efficiency Modeling

The meat industry has played a pivotal role in shaping modern concepts of division of labor, mass production, continuous flow, and efficiency modeling. While the roots of the assembly line can be traced back to ancient times, the 19th-century meat-processing industry in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Chicago indeed laid the foundation for these industrial techniques in the 20th century.

In these early packinghouses, workers utilized overhead trolleys to transport carcasses from one station to another. The breakthrough came when these trolleys were connected with chains and powered mechanisms, creating a true assembly line experience. This innovative approach, often referred to as a "disassembly" line due to the meat-cutting process, allowed stationary workers to concentrate on a specific task dictated by the steady movement of the carcasses. The result was minimized unnecessary movement and a remarkable increase in productivity.

Meatpacking, initially a local business during the colonial era, underwent a significant transformation by the turn of the 20th century. It evolved from a seasonal industry to a massive and year-round enterprise. The growth of cities provided a lucrative new market for fresh meat. At the same time, large-scale ranching, the advent of railroads, refrigeration, and entrepreneurial skills all played pivotal roles in nationalizing the industry.

With overland cattle drives moving herds to railheads in Kansas. Abilene, Kansas, emerged as a prominent railhead, shipping thousands of cattle annually to major cities such as Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Chicago. Entrepreneurs like Philip Armour and Gustavus Franklin Swift capitalized on these opportunities. Swift, who specialized in long-distance refrigerated meat shipments, developed an integrated network of cattle procurement, slaughtering, packing, and shipping.

The introduction of practical refrigerated rail cars in 1881 again revolutionized the industry. This innovation allowed the transportation of cattle and hog carcasses instead of live animals, significantly reducing weight and opening up national and transatlantic markets. By recognizing the potential, Swift built a fleet of refrigerated boxcars that numbered 12,000. Refrigeration improved rural access to fresh meats and elevated food quality standards nationwide.

What Kind of Kids Eat Armour Hotdogs…

Armour & Company, founded in Chicago by the Armour brothers in 1867, emerged as one of the leading firms in the meatpacking industry. It propelled Chicago and its Union Stock Yards to the forefront of the nation's meatpacking industry. Omaha, Nebraska, also witnessed substantial growth in the meatpacking industry, courtesy of Armour & Company. The company's influence extended beyond meatpacking, venturing into pharmaceuticals with Armour Pharmaceuticals and introducing Dial soap in 1948.

Before the centralization efforts spearheaded by Philip Armour, the meat industry was disorganized and inefficient. Local butchers operated independently from packinghouses and slaughterhouses, limiting access to fresh packaged meats. Transport costs were high, requiring the shipment of entire cows rather than just the saleable beef. Additionally, the need for refrigeration and limited technological advancements hindered the industry's growth.

Armour recognized the benefits of centralization and drew inspiration from the efficient rail systems. By consolidating packing and processing operations into a single centralized location, he reduced transportation expenses and eliminated the need for slaughter facilities in every city. Furthermore, Armour implemented labor-saving measures by breaking down the butcher role into subroutines that unskilled workers could perform. This commoditized labor, reducing wages and simplifying staffing for management.

Despite the harsh working conditions in the packinghouses, which were arduous, polluted, and perilous, the jobs attracted immigrants searching for employment opportunities. The vertical integration concept introduced by Philip Armour was another significant contribution to the industry. Live cattle, hogs, and sheep would ascend a series of ramps to the facility's top floor, where they would be slaughtered. The carcasses would then move down successive floors, aided by gravity to facilitate blood drainage.

Interestingly, Henry Ford later adopted many of these principles for the automobile industry, although some of Armour's ideas are often mistakenly attributed to Ford. The influence of the meat industry on industrial practices and efficiency modeling cannot be overstated, and its innovations continue to shape various sectors today.

“Progressive Assembly”:?It’s Not Your (Great Grand) Father’s Oldsmobile

As we learned examining Eli Whitney’s contributions in the early 19th century, the development of machine tools, such as the screw-cutting lathe, metal planer, and milling machine, and of toolpath control via jigs and fixtures, provided the prerequisites for the modern assembly line by making interchangeable parts a practical reality. It just took one man to put it all together.

The modern assembly line and its basic concept are credited to Ransom Olds, not Henry Ford, who used it to build the first mass-produced automobile, the Oldsmobile Curved Dash. In 1901, Olds put in place much of what we recognize as the assembly line today; it defined repetitive operations, improved stations, and delivered parts to the workers. It allowed considerable workloads to be broken down into more minor tasks. Olds referred to this as “progressive assembly," using interchangeable parts and wheeled stands that could be moved from place to place to improve the speed of manufacture and production. This contrasts with the later Henry Ford method of moving the product along a moving assembly line bringing the car in progress to the workers and the workstations rather than moving the workers and the workstations to the vehicle in progress.

Ransom Olds grew up the son of a blacksmith and learned his father’s values, diligence, and exacting work, at an early age. In 1895 Ransom and his father opened Olds Gasoline Engine Works, where the two experimented and worked, and by 1896 had built their first gasoline-powered automobile. On August 21st, 1897, he opened the Olds Motor Vehicle Company in Lansing, Michigan, and that year sold four cars. The initial vehicles didn't sell very well because of the expense and the consumer aversion to being an early adopter. In 1899 an investor named Samuel L. Smith stepped in and bought the company. The new company, renamed Olds Motor Works, was relocated from Lansing to Detroit. Smith became president, while Olds became VP & GM.

By 1901 Olds had built 11 prototype vehicles, including at least one of each power mode: steam, electricity, and gasoline. In 1934, he received a patent for a diesel engine. He was the only American automotive pioneer to produce and sell at least one of each automobile mode.

Several challenges tempered Old’s successes in 1901. Later in the year, a fire broke out at the Olds factory, burning the facility to the ground. Olds had just returned from a vacation to find his factory in smoldering ruin and destroyed most of his prototype vehicles. However, the gas-powered “Curved Dash” runabout was the sole vehicle saved from the fire. The plans for the car had also survived the fire, as had the foundry. The factory fire led Olds to create the first system of automotive suppliers. In late 1900, to keep up with demand, Olds contracted with the Dodge Brothers for engines and Henry M. Leland, head of Leland and Faulconer Co., for transmissions. These were some of the first large component orders made by an automaker to outside suppliers. Although some references claim Olds patented the assembly line process, I could not find the patent among the dozens credited to him in the US patent office.

The Olds fixed assembly line worked well in its time partly because there wasn’t a lot of process variability, and there weren’t any particularly complex processes. That meant you could simply distribute tasks across fixed workstations and let the process run.

Besides cost reductions, “progressive assembly” provided a more efficient work environment. The assembly line led to faster production. Switching to this process allowed his Oldsmobile to increase output by 500 percent in one year. The Curved Dash model was produced at an exceptionally high rate of 20 units per day.

The Curved Dash Oldsmobile sold for $650, equal to $23,500 today. About 400 were produced in 1901, about 2,500 in 1902, and at least 4,000 in 1904. The Oldsmobile brand now had the ability to create a vehicle with a low price, simple assembly, and stylish features.

The assembly line, paired with industrialization, was a primary catalyst that turned our nation from agriculture towards the modern-day machine-driven world we know today.?One more set of innovations would move Ransom Olds' progressive assembly toward the modern assembly line.?Those innovations came from Henry Ford.

The Assembly Line Meets Scientific Management

The Model T, first produced in 1908, was a simple, sturdy car less expensive than most other cars but still not attainable for the "multitude." Ford's engineers took the first step toward this goal by designing the Model T to offer no factory options, not even a choice of color. Ford realized he'd need a more efficient way to produce the car to lower its price. He and his team looked at other industries and found four principles that would further their goal: interchangeable parts, continuous flow, division of labor, and reducing wasted effort.

Ford called in Frederick Taylor, the creator of "scientific management," to do time and motion studies to determine the exact speed at which the work should proceed and the exact motions workers should use to accomplish their tasks. Ford put these principles into play gradually over five years, fine-tuning and testing as he went along. In 1913, they came together in the first moving assembly line ever used for large-scale manufacturing. Ford produced cars at a record-breaking rate. That meant he could lower the price and still make a good profit by selling more cars.

The Model T Touring car in 1913 cost $600; inflation-adjusted for 2013, about $18,431 in 2023 dollars. By 1925, that same Touring car had reduced in price to just $260... about $7,987 in 2023 dollars! Ford had another notion, rather original in its time: the workers were also potential consumers! In 1914, Ford workers' wages were raised to $5 a day, an excellent wage, and they soon proved him right by buying their own Model Ts. Ford was called "a traitor to his class" by other industrialists and professionals, but he firmly believed that well-paid workers would put up with dull work, be loyal, and buy his cars.

Ford's use of interchangeable parts, continuous flow, division of labor, and reduced wasted effort revolutionized the manufacturing industry. By implementing these principles, he made the Model T more affordable and accessible to a broader range of people. The moving assembly line allowed for the mass production of cars and lowered their cost, allowing Ford to increase both his profits and his employees' wages. Ford's belief in the importance of well-paid workers as potential consumers was revolutionary and set a standard for fair labor practices that is still relevant today.

When the Workers are the Tools Being “Improved.”

The convergence of Frederick W. Taylor's scientific management principles and Henry Ford's assembly line revolutionized the world of work in the early 20th century. These two groundbreaking innovations brought unprecedented efficiency and productivity to industrial settings, forever altering the nature of labor. Taylor's emphasis on planning, coordination, and worker training perfectly complemented Ford's vision of streamlining production through the division of labor and mass production techniques.

Frederick W. Taylor, an American industrial engineer, introduced scientific management as a new discipline to improve factory productivity and efficiency. He emphasized the importance of careful planning, coordination, and worker training in the production process. Taylor's approach involved breaking down jobs into constituent motions, eliminating unnecessary movements, and timing workers using stopwatches. This mechanistic routine increased productivity, with workers performing tasks more efficiently. Additionally, Taylor advocated for task specialization to further enhance productivity.

Taylor's contemporaries, Frank B. Gilbreth and Lillian E. Gilbreth contributed to the development of scientific management through their invention of motion studies. By analyzing bricklaying tasks, they identified wasted motion and designed an adjustable scaffold that significantly accelerated the process. Industrial engineering expanded beyond labor operations to encompass all aspects of factory operation, including layout, materials handling, and product design. Applying scientific principles and measurements to the work process, industrial engineering aimed to optimize factory operations.

While scientific management showed promise in improving efficiency, neglecting human emotions and motivations left workers dissatisfied. Unions emerged as advocates for worker rights, criticizing the speedup practice and the standardized physical movements and thought processes imposed by Taylorism. Complaints about irritability, fatigue, and adverse health effects among workers were prevalent. Unions demanded a balance between human labor and machine technology, leading to the development of industrial psychology.

It's All in Your Head:?The Role of Industrial Psychology:

Scientific management, pioneered by Frederick W. Taylor, brought efficiency and productivity to factory settings but neglected the human element. Taylor felt workers were motivated by pay and nothing else. He is credited for promoting the philosophy “an Honest Day’s Pay for an Honest Day’s work.”?However, union resistance and the emergence of industrial psychology addressed the need to balance worker satisfaction and productivity. The subsequent integration of behavioral sciences and ergonomic design development furthered modern work practices' evolution.

George Elton Mayo, an Australian professor of industrial relations at Harvard Business School in the 1920s, made significant contributions to the field. Regarded as the pioneer of the human relations (HR) movement, Mayo earned the esteemed titles of both the "father of HR" and the "father of scientific management." Using a scientific methodology, he effectively debunked the notion that employees were innately lazy. Mayo's management theory posits that workers are primarily motivated by social and interpersonal dynamics rather than financial or environmental factors.

Industrial psychology recognized that mass production methods affected workers psychologically, influencing their immediate job environment and relationships with colleagues and supervisors. Elton Mayo's experiments at the Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric Company revealed that changes in lighting, even when illusory, resulted in increased productivity. Mayo concluded that the workers' attitudes toward their jobs and the company significantly impacted productivity—a phenomenon known as the Hawthorne effect. This finding led to recommendations for improving motivation and productivity, such as job alternation, enlargement, and enrichment.

Mayo's work broadened the scope of scientific management by incorporating behavioral sciences, such as social psychology, into the study of work and labor-management relationships. It also spurred the development of human-factors engineering and ergonomics, which aimed to design equipment that accommodates human physiology and provides a user-friendly experience. This includes considering comfortable work levels, minimal strain, and easily accessible controls.

The future of Repetitive Manufacturing: Mass Production, Automation & Robotics in the 21st Century.?

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, engineers worldwide began exploring the potential of robotics for industrial development. Since then, the field of robotics has made remarkable advancements, leading to sophisticated and adaptable robots that can work alongside humans. 1961 General Motors made a significant leap by installing a robotic arm on its assembly line. Shortly after, Stanford engineer Victor Scheinman created the Stanford Arm, a revolutionary 6-axis robot that paved the way for modern assembly techniques. These early innovations set the stage for the widespread use of robotics in industrial settings.

Today, companies like Rethink Robotics are pushing the boundaries of robotics technology. They aim to develop adaptive manufacturing robots capable of collaborating closely with humans. Rethink Robotics, in particular, focuses on making their robots low-cost and user-friendly. Initially launched in 2012, the Baxter robot continues to receive regular upgrades, making it a versatile and valuable asset for many industries.

The story of Tesla serves as a cautionary tale about implementing automation. In its quest to meet ambitious production goals for the Model 3 sedan, Tesla embarked on a fully automated production strategy. However, the company encountered significant obstacles, including delays, financial losses, and reputational damage. Excessive automation and inadequate testing and reliability were substantial contributors to these setbacks.

Despite the initial struggles, Tesla overcame its production challenges and emerged as a thriving company. The transformation came through self-imposed constraints and a renewed focus on innovation. Tesla reshaped its approach to automation, refining and optimizing the integration of robotics within its production processes. By doubling down on automation while addressing the limitations and challenges, Tesla achieved its production targets and solidified its position as a leader in the automotive industry. The story of Tesla serves as a reminder that strategic implementation and continuous innovation are critical factors in harnessing the full potential of automation for industrial development.

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