Ford Automates: Technology and Organization in Theory and Practice

David A. Hounshell • CarnegieMellon University

Manufacturingis the heartof a manufacturingcompany. A troubledmanufacturing companyinvariably requires significant improvements in the managementof thisactivity. Most of the key aspectsof manufacturingare of a professionalnature. The manufacturingorganization's key executivesmust be well educated and have broad experience.A manufacturingorganization led and primarilystaffed by menwho worked theirway up from theshop floor is inappropriatetoday. If thisis the case,it may be oneof the company'sproblems. EugeneF. Finkin, SuccessfulCorporate Turnarounds (1987), p. 91

The Rouge in 1945 was very confused. The deteriorationsince he had left was shocking."Ford wasa gonegoose." The Bennett-Rauschgroup had just aboutwrecked the place. Few wantedto have anythingto do with the situationin the Rouge. No one knew who reportedto whom; the linesof authoritywere indistinct. If Willow Run hadbeen badly administered,the Rougewas in far worseshape. Noteson Interviewwith CharlesPatterson, Vice President,Ford Motor Company, November 13, 1959, as recordedby F.E. Hill and M. Wilkins, Ford Archives

By the late 1940s,the U.S. autoindustry had adopted the structureand strategyit wouldpursue for nearly40 years.Well-defined tasks eased the burden of automating,since a dedicatedmachine could be assignedto eachspecial task. This policyled to inflexible automation,so that by the 1960s,even a smallchange in thedimensions of an enginewould requiremillions of dollarsfor new tooling. Michael L. Dertouzoset al., eds., Made in America: Regainingthe Productive Edge (1989), pp. 176-177

The centralproblem I wishto addressin this paperis the reorganizationof the Ford Motor Companyafter 1945 andthe developmentof Ford's automation program.By all accounts,Ford Motor Companyhovered near organizational and

•Thispaper draws heavily on myextensive article on the Ford Motor Company's Cleveland EnginePlant, which is citedin thebibliography. My focushere is on organizationalissues, a subjectI barelytouched in my article.

BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC HISTORY, Volume twenty-four,no. 1, Fall 1995. Copyright¸1995 by the BusinessHistory Conference. ISSN 0849-6825.

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technologicalcollapse in 1945. Yet whenproduction began six yearslater at its newCleveland Engine Plant, the company was hailed as the pioneer of automation, the leaderof the new waveof productiontechnology that sweptthrough American manufacturingin the 1950s [2; 13]. For a brief period,Ford's top executivesand its publicrelations department touted automation as a revolutionarydevelopment in Americanmanufacturing that would soon give rise to theworkerless factory [16]. Fear of automationspread quickly throughoutthe ranks of Ford's production workersand, more generally, the American workforce. Perceived as a majorthreat to the livelihoodsof Americanworkers, the developmentof automationled to two congressionalinquiries, the first in 1955 [26] andthe secondin 1960 [27], andto intensediscussion at all levelsof Americansociety. By the time of the first series of hearings,the Ford Motor Companyhad abandonedits revolutionaryrhetoric aboutautomation, but it embracedthe new technology even more firmly in spiteof already-apparentproblems of inflexibility. Since 1948, owing in part to its substantialinvestment in automation,the companyhad reversedits downward course,had recovered a significantshare of the U.S. automobilemarket, and had returnedhandsome profits to its owners. (SeeFigure 1.) How did Ford movefrom beingperceived as a companyin which rigor mortis had already set in to one perceivedas the leader of a revolutionary, productivenew technologyin sucha shortspan of time? Given thatFord Motor Companywas consciouslyreorganized after 1945 by applyingthe management principlesof GeneralMotors--especially those involving decentralization--how did Ford wind up with a productionsystem that was in many waysmore Fordist than in the glory daysof Henry Ford? The storyof thelong, steady decline of theFord Motor Companyfrom the peakof the 1920sto thedramatic succession of HertryFord II, grandsonof theelder Ford, has beenmasterfully told by the teamof historiansassembled under Allan Nevins. The third volumeof this monumentalhistory of Ford Motor Company, whichappeared in 1962, chroniclesthe "rebirth"of the firm underthe leadership of Henry Ford II andthe mentorhe recruitedfrom GeneralMotors, ErnestBreech [21]. As this studymakes clear, the reorganization of Ford Motor Companywas carriedout usingblueprints from GeneralMotors, at thattime, the largestand most successcorporation in the world. The architectsof this reorganizationwere by no meansnovices at readingand understandingthese blueprints. A largenumber of them were seasoned executives from General Motors, and the remainder of the reorganizationteam were taughtabout General Motors throughPeter Drucker's now-classic1946 book, The Conceptof the Corporation,which reified General Motors,its organizationalstructure, and its managerialprinciples [7]. Ford: Decline and Rebirth articulatesclearly how the GeneralMotors modelwas brought to Ford andhow it waspromoted within the company. Yet it is lessdirect in statinghow difficult applyingthe GeneralMotors modelto Ford provedto be. In fact, the authorsprovide little or no indicationof the struggle wagedwithin Ford over how far thecompany would go in recreatingitself in the imageof GeneralMotors. Perhapsthey wereunaware of the struggle,or perhaps theysaw it asbeing peripheral to theirinterpretation. But my research suggests that thestruggle was more than academic. The debatewent well beyondthe theory of themodern corporation. It movedvery quickly to thevery heart of theFord Motor Company--toFord's system of production,its in-place assets, its ingrainedpatterns of thought,and its organizational routines. Even before what became the Cleveland 61

EnginePlant was authorized,how Ford would produceengines became a central focusfor debateover the degreeto whichFord wouldemulate General Motors. The company'sdecision to buildthe Cleveland Engine Plant constituted the end of the debate.The old order--theFordist ideal, not old Ford managers--triumphed.The companycommitted itself moredeeply to the principlesof massproduction and centralizedcontrol of productionthan ever before.

FIGURE 1 FORD'S SHARE OF THE U.S. AUTOMOBILE MARKET

Per Cent PassengerVehicles 45

40

30

25

WAR 20 YEARS

10

SOURCE.'Ford Motor Company Annual Reports, 1947, 1954. 62

The dominanttheory of decentralizedmanagement to whichmany of thetop managersrecruited from General Motors clung centeredon the existenceof divisionsand the principle of divisionalautonomy [7; 4]. Whenthey looked at Ford MotorCompany, they saw only a tiny hintof divisionalization.Even before Ernest Breecharrived at Ford Motor Company,Henry Ford II had takena steptoward decentralizationby creatinga distinctLincoln-Mercury Division nominallyin chargeof its own development,manufacturing, and marketing. (See Figure 2.) Here emphasismust be placedon the word "nominally"because such conditions existedmainly in theoryand not in practice.

FIGURE 2 FORD MOTOR COMPANY ORGANIZATION, AUGUST 1946

DirectorsBoardof I

President I ExecutiveV.P, I PolicyCommittee OperatthgDivisions I Staff Divisions j - - etc. Mfg

SOURCE: Adaptedfrom Report of ManagementMeeting, May 1947.

Whenthey considered the future of theFord Motor Company,the GM men envisageda multi-divisionalfirm that mightlook like the following. It would consist of at least four automobile divisions: a new one that would manufacture and sell a light, fuel-efficientvehicle comparable to Europeanautomobiles; a Ford Divisionthat would manufacture and market a car calleda Ford that corresponded to the typeof car alreadymade by the company:a MercuryDivision that would manufactureand market a hotter,perhaps larger, and certainly more expensive car than the Ford Division; and a Lincoln Division that would make and market a 63

luxurycar that could compete head-to-head with GM's Cadillac. In the future, Ford MotorCompany might add another division such that the company could have completecoverage of themarket--a "car for everypurse and purpose" in the immortalwords of GM's AlfredSloan. (See Figure 3.) Thiswas the theory held bythe GM guysand toward which they fervently worked.

FIGURE 3 THE "GM PLAN" FOR FORD MOTOR COMPANY, C.1946-1948

DirectorsBoardof I

President I ExecutiveV.P. I PolicyCommittee OperatingDivisions Staff Divisions

SOURCE: Author'sInterpretation of FordExecutives' Discussions on Organization,1946-1948.

Realitysoon got in theway of theory,however. First, unlike General Motors,Ford Motor Company was not a organizationthat had been built out of a looseassemblage of acquisitions. Ford was the manifestation of a dominant idea of producinga solid, low-cost automobile [15]. Nowherewas this ideal better exemplifiedthan in thecompany's River Rouge plant. With the exceptions of regionalassembly plants and some Lincoln operations, virtually everything that the FordMotor Company made was produced at the Rouge. The scaleof and investmentinthe Rouge proved to be too big to ignore; the Rouge loomed so large 64

in thecompany's operations as to makealternatives to it difficult,if not impossible, to conceive. Second, although some executives were attracted to the idea of the company'smanufacturing a light vehicleand establishingan autonomouslight vehicledivision, as time passed, the forces against the lightcar gained ground. By 1949,the idea was dead. With onedivision down, the planfor multipledivisions, eachpossessing its own manufacturingfacilities, began to give way. The creationof a separateFord Division within the Ford Motor Company in 1949 madeclear the conflictbetween theory and practicein decentralization. (SeeFigure 4.) Headedby LewisCrusoe, an executivewith yearsof experienceat GeneralMotors who held tightly to theideal of divisionalautonomy, the newFord Division moved very quickly to garner control over its own manufacturing operations. This ploy failed almost as quickly, becausethe company's manufacturingoperations had been so thoroughlycentralized at the Rougethat cedingcontrol over manufacture to theFord Division meant ceding control over the Rouge. It also effectivelymeant demotingthe corporatevice presidentfor manufacturingto a positiondown in the hierarchyof the division. Given the dominanceof productionin the company'shistory, that simplywas not goingto happen.

RGURE 4 FORD MOTOR COMPANY ORGANIZATION, FEBRUARY 1949 I DirectorsBoardof 1 I ExecutiveCommittee I I PresidentJ I Exec. Vice Pres.

Staff Divisions etc, I I ManufacturingEngineering Division Division I Division I I DivisionI Vice Pres. Vice Pms. [ VicePres. J ePres.J

Operating D•ns I I

Division Division Divi VicePres. VicePres. I VicePres. I I Genet GeneralMgr. .J GeneralMgr.

SOURCE:Adapted from 1949 Ford Motor Company Organization Chart, Ford Industrial Archives. 65

Fourth,beginning in mid-1949,Ford executivesmade a seriesof decisions theyassociated with decentralizationof the company,but in fact thesedecisions initially obscuredwhat decentralizationmeant. Here I alludeto decisionsthey made to locateparts production facilities outside the Rouge(and indeedoutside Detroit). The goalwas to lessenthe company's dependence on the Rougefor parts production;the goal was to makethe companyless vulnerable to labor action. GeneralMotors clearly provided the inspiration for thisseries of decisions[24; 25; 28]. After GM lost the sitdownstrike at Flint and was forced to recognizethe UAW, thecompany made a consciousdecision to weakenthe effectsof labor'snew powerthrough distributing parts manufacturing plants geographically. Foliowinga crippling, twenty-four day strike at the Rouge in thespring of 1949that cost the company millions of lostlabor-hours at a time whendemand for its 1949 automobilewas unprecedented,Ford executivesdecided to build parts productioncapacity outside Detroit [12, 1949]. The first of these plants was authorizedimmediately after the strike ended through arbitration and before a new agreementwas reachedwith the UAW. Executiveschose to build a sheetsteel stampingplant in Buffalo,New York, thatwould take jobs awayfrom the Rouge's body stampingoperations even thoughthe economicsof alternativelocations showedthat the lowestunit costs,transportation costs, and other costswould be realizedthrough simply expanding the Rouge's operations. This decision,the new Ford Divisionhead Lewis Crusoe believed, opened a windowof opportunityfor his new division to claim organizationalcontrol over the new plant and to begin creatingan autonomousmanufacturing department, thereby liberating the Ford Division from the Rouge. This questionwas left up in the air for a brief period while executivesstudied the questionsof whatkind of enginesthe companywould have in its new model automobilesand where and how it would producethose engines. The settlementof what Ford executivescalled "the forward engine program"determined in very largemeasure the organizationof theentire company. The vice presidentfor manufacturing,a former GM productionexpert named DelmarHarder, had in 1947reorganized engine manufacture at theRouge plant, but eventhen he continuedto arguethat the company needed a new engineplant. The existingengine plant could not handlethe capacity increases being contemplated. Overcrowdinghampered production efficiencies, and smooth changeovers to new enginetypes would be impossible.By early 1949,before the establishment of the Ford Division, membersof the company'sForward Product Planning Committee haddetermined that the company needed to builda newengine plant to makea new six-cylinderoverhead valve engine. By November1949, however, following the creationof the Ford Division and the major strike at the Rouge, the company'snew Facilities Committee concludedthat more radical stepsshould be taken. First, the companyshould demolishits existingengine plant at the Rouge(the so-calledMotor Building)and relocateand upgrade machinery from the Motor Buildingto the Rouge'sParts and AccessoriesBuilding. This plantwould make 4,135 of theclassic Ford V-8 engines per day. In addition,the company should build two completelynew engineplants, one to makethe newoverhead valve six-cylinder engine for theFord automobile (2,205 per day), andthe otherto producea new--andlarger--overhead valve V-8 66

engineof the Mercury (1,973 per day) and a still-larger-boreengine of the same Mercuryblock for the Lincoln(376 per day) [10]. The Facilities Committee had arrived at this recommendation to the company'snew ExecutiveCommittee based not only on the projectedproduction requirementsfor the new modelFord, Mercury, andLincoln automobiles,but in accordancewith two fundamentalprinciples. The firstwas that the company should reduceits dependenceon the Rougefor partsmanufacture to fifty percentof the company'sneeds. The secondprinciple was that thecompany's divisions should havetheir own production capacities. The committee'splan would essentially give thenew Ford Division organizational control over the relocated engine plant at the Rouge and one of the new plants. The Lincoln-MercuryDivision would have controlover its ownengine plant as well. As executivesdeliberated, Lewis Crusoe madeclear that he waseyeing the Buffalo stamping plant, then under construction, for control by his Ford Division. (At the same time, executiveswere also contemplatinghow to meetthe production needs for newlyprojected transmissions for thenew models, so here too wasyet anotheropportunity for the Ford Division to gainadditional manufacturing assets.) The ExecutiveCommittee approved the recommendation of the Facilities Committee on November 4, 1949. The ink hadbarely dried on theExecutive Committee's approval, however, when Robert S. McNamara, one of the Whiz Kids [3] who was now Ford Motor Company'sController and who had been a memberof theFacilities Committee, put forthan alternativeidea--"Plan A" [ 19]. It essentiallyquestioned the assumptions underwhich the Facilities Committee had formulated its report. McNamara'splan preservedthe principleof organizationalseparation (i.e., "Enginemachining and assemblymust be segregatedby end productdivision without regard to engine interchangeabilityor relative operatingcosts of different plant sizes")but shifted the productionof the new Ford 6 back to the Rouge. It thusviolated one of the committee'sexplicit criteria, which was to lower the Rouge'sproduction to 50% of thecompany's total engine needs. McNamara suggested that thecompany simply purchasecastings for the new Ford 6 as well as thosefor the new Lincoln V-8. With someminor rearranging, he argued,the Rouge'sfoundry could produce the castingsfor the new Mercury V-8. He also suggestedother alternativesto the approvedplan, includingusing the company'sDetroit-Lincoln plant for engine manufacture.Plan A, McNamaramaintained, would save the companysome $46 million in investmentand manufacturing costs. McNamara's proposal threw Ford's topexecutives into a spinand put Harder very much on thedefensive. The ExecutiveCommittee met in early December1949 to reconsiderits earlierdecision in lightof McNamara'sPlan A [8]. It summoneda largenumber of interestedparties and the membersof the Facilities Committee, including McNamara, to attend the meeting. Harder first presentedhis department's assessmentof costsassociated with using the Detroit-Lincoln plant versusbuilding a new engineplant. His counterargumentdemolished McNamara's assumptions. The committeeagreed with Harder that further pursuit of the Detroit-Lincolnplant idea would be "inadvisable." Harder then distributed--and read--a new memorandum to the Executive Committeein whichhe reassuredthe committeemembers that the plan they had approveda monthearlier had been well formulated[14]. The FacilitiesCommittee, Harderstressed, had carefully developed twenty alternative plans of whichhe had presentedonly the four mostattractive ones. He reiteratedthat the committee's 67

decisionto buildtwo new engine plants was sound. Presenting 1ocational data for the two new plants,Harder then askedthe committeeto make a decisionabout wherethe plantswould be built. The choicesincluded Detroit, Chicago, and Clevelandand combinations thereof. With these choices Harder also presented cost estimationsthat includedsite costs,tax burdens,and freightrates but did not includewage rates and "laborefficiency" figures in eachof the cities. As the minutesof the meetingnote, discussion then "ensued." Whenthe meeting adjourned, the committee had determined to buildonly oneengine plant (complete with foundry)and to locateit in Cleveland,Ohio. But unlikeeither the previously approved plan or McNamara'sPlan A, theCleveland plantwould be built to manufacture4,000 to 4,500engines a day--essentiallythe combineddaily output projected for the two previouslyapproved plants. Scale economiesthus became the overridingfactor in theCleveland plant. "Theactual mixof enginesto bemanufactured in the new plant .... "notethe minutes, "would bethe subject of furtherstudy." The decision to builda singleplant unquestionably threwout the idea of theproduct divisions manufacturing their own engines and withit theprinciple of divisionalcontrol of manufacturingassets. The Executive Committeeimmediately deferred "consideration of the questionof whetheror not to makethe Buffalo Stamping Plant a partof theFord Division" [8]. Ultimately, the company'sdecisions about productionwould lead to the vestingof organizationalresponsibility for boththe Buffalo Stamping Plant and the Cleveland EnginePlant in a "group"of themanufacturing department named the Engine and PressedSteel Group [9]. (See Figure5.) Ford Motor Companythus remained production-oriented,rather than product-oriented. The ExecutiveCommittee also approvedHarder's recommendation to raze the Rouge's old Motor Building and to relocateand upgradeengine production to the Rouge'sParts and Accessories Building. Althoughminutes of theExecutive Committee's meeting at whichit made thismajor shift in policysurvive, they give little or noindication of whyexecutives made this decision. We can speculate,however, that the committee'searlier decisionto lessenthe company'sdependence on the Rougeby fifty percent remainedfirm andgoverned the rejectionof McNamara'sPlan A. But, as noted, therejection of thetwo-plant scenario and the decision to builda singleengine plant that wouldproduce engines for Ford,Mercury, and Lincoln automobiles clearly signalledthat sheer manufacturing efficiency--the Fordist ideal--governed the Ford executives'behavior. The committee'sdecision to concentrateresponsibility for all thecompany's manufacturing into a bigManufacturing Department demonstrates the pervasivenessand strengthof Fordist ideals and the limits of the decentralizationtheories that had motivated so muchof the reorganizationthat HenryFord II andErnest Breech had implemented in thepostwar years. The ExecutiveCommittee's decision engendered a great deal of confusion withinthe ranks of Ford'swhite-collar employees and its blue-collar workers about decentralization.Led by ErnestBreech, top executives in thecompany had been espousingthe merits of decentralizationsince 1946 and had waged a campaignto educatethe Ford "community" about the principles of decentralizedmanagement beginningin May 1947[23]. At thesecond of aninnovative series of Management Meetings which broughtvarious elements of the Ford Motor Companyto headquartersfor meetingswith top executives, Breech had delivered a thorough briefing on decentralization,much of which was derived from Drucker's The 68

Conceptof the Corporation.In subsequentManagement Meetings, other top executivesbriefed their guestsabout how the conceptsof decentralizationwere beingimplemented at all levelsof thecorporation.

FIGURE 5 FORD MOTOR COMPANY ORGANIZATION, MARCH 1951

DirectorsBoardof I I ExecutiveCommittee I PresidentI I JExec. VicePres. [ Staff Divisions s,.... I I I I etc. Staff Staff Staff Division VicePres. VicePres. VicePres. VicePres. D.S. Harder Operating D/visions I

Division Manufacturing Division Lincoln-Merc.Vice Pres. D.S. Herder Vice Pres.

Vice President-- Vice President-- Vice President-- AircraftEngine, Basic Products Tractor, & Machined Engineand Pressed Group Steel Group ProductsGroup

SOURCE: FordMotor CompanyAnnual Report, 1950.

Yet somemembers of the company,including its mid- andlower-level managersand especially its blue-collar employees, became confused following the seriesof ExecutiveCommittee decisions to build the Buffalo StampingPlant, the ClevelandEngine Plant, and the Cincinnati Automatic Transmission Plant. They came to believe that decentralizationmeant simply de-concentrationof the company'smanufacture atthe Rouge without any evident structural change in the responsibilityfor the company's manufacturing operations. To a largeextent, their perceptionswere well founded. By theearly 1950s Breech and other top executives 69

concludedthat becauseconfusion in the companyabout decentralization was so widespreadthey had to issuea new setof briefingsfocused on decentralizationand to assertthat it shouldnot be confusedwith the erectionof plantsoutside Detroit. Breech,T. O. Yntema(vice presidentfor finance),Delmar Harder(vice president for manufacturing),and John S. Bugas(vice presidentfor industrialrelations) all soughtto explainhow the principles of decentralization--theseparation of line and staff functions--hadbeen faithfully executed since 1945 [1]. To understandthe ExecutiveCommittee's decision not to provide its operatingdivisions with their own parts manufacturing plants, one must understand thesignificant development of controlsystems that had been put in placeand were being rapidly expandedby Yntema and especiallyby Robert McNamara and another Whiz Kid from the Air Force, Arjay Miller. In an interview with McNamara,I queriedhim aboutwhat went on in theExecutive Committee meeting thatultimately determined the structure of theFord Motor Company.Although he couldnot recallthe meetingwith any detail, he assertedthat the controlsystem he had putin placein thecompany, and especially the developmentof transferpricing, allowedthe company to reapthe benefits of centralizedmanagement of production (hence the Manufacturing Division) while maintaining a semblance of decentralization[18]. He wasreferring, of course.to the developmentof the profit centerconcept and the control and accounting mechanisms that madeit possiblein an organizationlike Ford. McNamaraalso added that many of the Ford executives from General Motors remainedso weddedto the GeneralMotors way of doing things that they could not functionwell in the new Ford organization,which in many respectsrepresented a hybrid of the old Ford Companyand the General Motors depictedby PeterDrucker. Although I have so far explainedhow the ClevelandEngine Plant played a pivotal role in settlingthe organizationalstructure and philosophyof the Ford Motor Company,I have done little to suggestwhy it cameto be seenas sucha radical stepin manufacturingtechnology. GeneralMotors figuresin this part of Ford'shistory as well. Three key factorsshaped the productionoperations design of theCleveland Engine Plant. The first wasthe decisionthat Delmar Harder made in April 1947 to organizean AutomationDepartment within his Manufacturing Division [17]. Hardercharged the new unit's engineersand productionexperts with the developmentof relatively inexpensive,reliable methodsof automatingthe transtrkrof materialsin processfrom oneoperation to another.His instructionswere to designand install such "automation" devices if the costof eachdevice were less than$3000 (or roughlyten to fifteenpercent over the annualwages of an average, fully employedblue collar worker in theautomobile industry at the time). Payback for thesedevices had to be in one year. Thus, for all intentsand purposes,to be viable each automation device had to eliminate at least one worker. The company'sdecision in 1949 to build a sheetsteel stamping plant in Buffalo gave Harder an enormousopportunity to expand his ideas about automation, and indeed hundreds of automation devices were installed there before the factoryopened [22]. That the Buffalo plant was effectivelya tabula rasa and that it had none of the constraintsof labor that existed at the Rouge were fundamentalto its success.The thinkingbehind the Cleveland Engine Plant and its highlyautomated foundry was definitely influenced by theBuffalo experience; this was the second factor. 70

The thirdkey factorin theoutcome of theCleveland Engine Plant's design was the Ford ExecutiveCommittee's charge to Harder to build a plant in which engines,as is notedin an early planningdocument, "would be processedwithout limitation by presentpractice" [5]. As JamesBright recountedthe Executive Committee'scharge to Harder,the manufacturingengineering department was "to give us the mostmodern, efficient plant in the country"[2, p. 59]. This was a licenseto innovatealong Fordist lines. Hardermoved quickly to pusha technology thatGeneral Motors had helped to developwhile he wasthere but notaggressively adopted:the transfermachine [16, 20, 29]. The ClevelandEngine Plant would employtransfer machines to a greaterextent than any other automobile plant in the world. Thesetransfer machines would be linkedtogether by the materialshandling devicesof hisAutomation unit, thereby reducing to almostzero the laborrequired to load and unload these machines. Through this design Harder's departmentlargely met the Executive Committee'sexpectations, and, as alreadynoted, the ClevelandEngine Plant was hailed as an engineeringwonder. But almostimmediately product obsolescence broughton by therampant "horsepower race" of the 1950sand '60s pointedup the problemsof inflexibilityof the "hardautomation" at Cleveland[16]. How Ford contendedwith theseproblems and whether these problems, as hasbeen frequently been assertedin the last decadeor so, were the sourceof problemsfor the entire U.S. automobileindustry are subjectsbeyond the scopeof thispaper. Without doubt,however, the constructionof the ClevelandEngine Plant servedto establishthe limits on theGM-inspired decentralization movement at Ford Motor Companywhile alsodeepening the company'scommitment to the Fordist productionideals that had driven Henry Ford and his bandof followerswhen they plannedand executed both the bold HighlandPark Plant and the gargantuanRiver Rouge Plant earlier in the century. Fundamentallyaltering the organizational cultureat Ford provedto be far moredifficult than Henry Ford II andhis mentor ErnestBreech anticipated in 1946.

References

1. Ernest R. Breechet al., Decentralization: What It Is and How It Worlc•,undated management briefingreport, ca. 1952,71-20:5, FordIndustrial Arehives, Dearborn, Michigan. 2. JamesR. Bright,Automation and Managetnent(Boston, 1958). 3. JohnA. Byrne,The WhizKids: TenFounding Fathers q/'American Business and the LegacyThey /4ft Us (New York, 1993). 4. Alfred D. Chandler,Jr., Strategyand Structure(Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1962). 5. L.D. Crusoeto HenryFord II, "PreliminaryReview of ProposedEngine Program," December 13, 1948, 65-71:41, Ford IndustrialArchives, Dearborn, Michigan. 6. MichaelL. Dertouzoset al., eds.,Made in America.'Regaining the ProductiveEdge (Cambridge, Massachusetts,1989). 7. PeterF. Drucker, Concepto['the Corporation(New York, 1946). 8. ExecutiveCommittee Minutes, Ford Motor Company, December 2, 1949,Ford Industrial Archives, Dearborn,Michigan. 9. ExecutiveCommunication to PolicyCommittee, November 15, 1949, Ford Motor Company,65- 71:7, Ford IndustrialArchives, Dearborn, Michigan. 71

10. FacilitiesCommittee, Ford Motor Company, "Forward Engine Program Facilities Study," November 4, 1949,in ExecutiveCommitee Minutes, November 4, 1949, Ford IndustrialArchives, Dearborn, Michigan. 11. EugeneF. Finkin,Succes,•/M Corporate Turnarounds: A Guide.fi•rBoard Members,Financial Managers,Financial Institutions, and Other Creditors(New York, 1987). 12. Ford Motor CompanyAnnual Reports, 1947-1955. 13. JosephGeschelin, "Engine Plant Operation by Automation,"Automotive Industries (May l, 1952), 36-39, 98 14. D.S. Harderto Henry Ford IIet al., "ForwardEngine Program--Facilities Study," December 2, 1949,Ford IndustrialArchives, Dearborn, Michigan. 15. DavidA. Hounshell,Frotn the American System to Ma,•sProduction, 1800-1932.' The Development qf ManuJacturingTechnology in the UnitedStates (Baltimore, 1984). 16. DavidA. Hounshell,"Planning and Executing 'Automation' at FordMotor Company, 1945-1965: The ClevelandEngine Plant and its Consequences,"in ShiomiHaruhito and KazuoWada, eds., FordismTransJbrmed: The Developmentof ProductionMethods in the AutomobileIndustry (Oxford.in press). 17. RupertLe Grand,"Ford Handles by Automation,"American Machinist 92 (October21, 1948), 107- 109. 18. RobertS. McNamara,Interview by DavidA. Hounshell,September 7, 1994. 19. RobertS. McNamara to T. O. Yntema, November 18, 1949, in ExecutiveCommittee Minutes, Ford MotorCompany, November 4, 1949,Ford Industrial Archives, Dearborn, Michigan. 20. StephenMeyer, "The Persistenceof Fordism: Workersand Technologyin the American AutomobileIndustry, 1900-1960," in NelsonLichtenstein and Stephen Meyer, eds., On the Line: Essaysin theHistory qf AutoWork (Urbana, 1989), 73-99. 21. Allan Nevins and Frank Ernest Hill, Ford: Decline and Rebirth, 1933-1962 (New York, 1962). 22. "ProposedNew PressedSteel Plant," 65-71:41, Ford Industrial Archives, Dearborn, Michigan. 23. Report of ManagementMeeting, May 1947, 65-71:36, Ford IndustrialArchives, Dearborn, Michigan. 24. DouglasReynolds, "Engines of Struggle:Technology, Skill, and Unionization at GeneralMotors, 1930-1940,"Michigan Historical Review 15, I (1989), 69-92. 25. JamesM. Rubenstein,The Changing U.S. Automobile Industry: A GeographicalAnalysis (London. 1992). 26. SpecialSubcommittee on Automation,Automation and Technological Change: Hearings beJbre theSenate Subcommittee on EconomicStabilization of theJoint Cotnmittee on the Economic Report, 84th Congress,1st session (Washington, D.C., 1955). 27. Subcommitteeon Automationand Energy Resources, New Viewson Automation, Joint Economic Committee,86th Congress,2d session(Washington, D.C., 1960). 28. LawrenceJ. White,The Automobile Industry since 1945 (Cambridge,Massachusetts, 1971). 29. FrankG. Woollard,Principles of Massand Flow Production(London, 1954).