Introduction. Researched Discussion

Transcription

1 Fordism

2 Introduction Fordism can be defined as the standardization of the production process which enables the organizations to have mass production of the goods resulting into lower cost production and better production in terms of quantity, quality and volume. Henry Ford was the person who came up with these ideas of transforming the manufacturing processes in the early 1910s where he introduced these ideas to his automobile manufacturing plant in Detroit, USA. While reviewing the production facility he realized that the current production process to manufacture the cars were very time consuming and effort intensive. Therefore he introduced the production process of standardization, where the same components, the processes and the other tools were used for manufacturing processes. These ideas were then termed as Fordism as it was Henry Ford who came up with these ideas. In fact Fordism not only included the changes in the production process only but other measures also which can help in increasing the productivity of the organization and also beneficial to the labors, such as Five Dollar Day scheme (Steinmetz 2006, pp ). Although these ideas were initially thought keeping in mind the automobile industry setup as Henry Ford s organization was dealing with manufacturing of vehicles as that time, these concepts are now widely used even in other manufacturing organizations as well to make the production more efficient and effective. The essay will discuss the essence of Fordism based on the research done to understand the topic. It will also examine how Fordism had influence on the management of the organizations. The essay will then provide the critical analysis of Fordism of how it has been useful to the organizations and what are its limitations. Finally the essay will conclude with the mention of moral and ethical issues related to Fordism. Researched Discussion As mentioned earlier, Henry Ford came up ideas which are now called Fordism to his automobile manufacturing plant in Detroit in order to improve its productivity. The ideas of standardizing the production process proved to be highly efficient and effective in that regard and thus were soon adopted by the other manufacturing industry organizations. Ford demonstrated that through application of standardization, the same machines and production material and tools could be used to prepare a standardized product with no deviation in between two same products. Fordism has been since then studied by scholars and practitioners and their researches have also proved that Fordism has a tremendous effect on increasing the productivity of the organizations. At present, almost every manufacturing organization makes use of Fordism to make the production

3 process simpler and more productive (Lipietz 1993, pp ). For example, today each and every organization in electronics industry has set up its manufacturing facility in such a way that the manual labor is replaced by the machines and the production happens in an assembly line like setup similar to the setup Henry Ford designed for his automobile manufacturing facility. Assembly line is actually a production setup where the each step of production process is carried out by a fixed individual or machine and the product moves from one person to another person for the subsequent steps before the final product is complete. The thinking behind assembly line is to break down the complicated production steps into smaller and simpler steps and assigning fixed workers and equipments to complete those broken down tasks which can make the workers efficient and the production more productive. The creation of assembly line is the biggest and most effective discovery which has benefited the manufacturing organizations immensely. But some experts also believe that although Fordism has tremendous benefits for manufacturing industry, its ideas cannot be implemented as extensively for other industries such as service industry. This is because the scope of application of Fordism in these industries gets limited to the inherent nature of the tasks involved in these industries as they are highly customized. Since the scope of application in these industries is limited and there are not much tangible benefits in such cases by implementing Fordism, the application of Fordism is largely restricted to the manufacturing organizations only (Panizzolo 2008, pp ). Some researchers have also argued that the concepts behind Fordism such as the creation of assembly line, standardization, labor specialization, reduction of manual labor and higher salary to the workers are indeed the application of Theory of Scientific Management which was proposed by Fredrick Taylor a lot earlier and therefore there is not much new in Fordism as this is just an adaptation of Taylor s ideas by Ford to his manufacturing facility. But one cannot take away the credit from Henry Ford of showing the way to practically implement the theoretical ideas proposed by Taylor and increase the productivity of the organization. In fact, Henry Ford contributed immensely to the field of management by demonstrating how to use the concepts of Human resource management and Operations management for the benefit of the organizations. (Heragu 1997, pp ) It can be observed that the concepts of Fordism are pertinent even today after so many years when it was first implemented and the huge change manufacturing industry has observed in all these years. The organizations at present times also use the ideas behind Fordism to improve upon their production processes. However they don t implement the principles of Fordism in as

4 raw manner as was implemented 100 years ago. The organizations modify the ideas as per their need now as we see Mac Donald s burger preparation process, Dell which offers customized products, Honda which offers standardized products; both have modified and implemented Fordism as per their needs. Some organizations have even re-created certain manufacturing processes based on Fordism. These new approaches are called Post-Fordism or Neo Fordism (Amin 1994, pp ). Post Fordism is more inclined towards enabling the organizations to have flexible production instead of mass production as the organizations today need flexible production more than mass production. Post Fordism, suggests that the organizations must go for Just in Time production of the goods and in batches smaller than mass production would have required. This helps in managing the inventory cost and wastage of the material better. Further it also helps in offering customized products to the consumers rather than offering one type of products to all consumers in mass production. Post Fordism also advocates subcontracting the tasks which are not the competency of the organizations to other organizations which are more proficient in doing them. This saves a lot of effort and cost for the organizations. Post Fordism theory further suggests to make the jobs more enriching to the workers by offering them training of other tasks than the ones in which they specialize and switch the tasks of workers on regular basis so that the workers don t get fatigued and saturated with their job (Krajewski & Rotzman 2002, pp ). The concepts and recommendations made by Post Fordism theorists are actually the extension of the old Fordism as per the needs of present business scenarios and changed customers needs. With the increase of number of suppliers of goods and thus increased competition to satisfy the customers, the organizations now need to do more than what the old Fordism suggests and thus these new ideas called Post Fordism are being adopted by the organizations rapidly these days. Influence of Fordism on management in organisations Application of Fordism had huge impact on the organizations in terms of the operational efficiency, management of resources and their proper utilization. Before Fordism was introduced, to manufacture an automobile, a particular worker had to do different tasks like welding the parts, fitting of parts, painting the car, etc which means that the individual had to be have knowledge and ability to do different tasks required to produce the cars. This was difficult for the workers because they couldn t master one particular art and thus used to take lot of time for completing the different tasks. Not only did it reduce the efficiency of the organizations but

5 also led to huge variations in the different goods and thus the quality of the products was also not good. But with the implementation of Fordism, the organizations could manage to increase their productivity and quality of the goods as the goods were produced in assembly line which were standard in their features and had similar quality for two different goods (Handfield & Nichols 2006, pp ). These improvements also had a direct impact on the reduction of the production costs and improving the bottom line and financial performance of the organizations. Fordism had influence not only on the operations management of the organizations but also on the human resource management of the organizations. Before Fordism was introduced, since the industrial revolution had begun at that times and there were many jobs available to the workers, there was less commitment towards the job they used to do. With the introduction of Fordism, the requirement of labor got reduced for the organizations which made the workers to work with more seriousness and coupled with the motivational incentives offered like higher wages and less cumbersome job with workers expecting to do only one task rather than multiple tasks increased the job satisfaction of the workers. This helped in reducing the absenteeism of the workforce and improving the efficiency of the workers. (Mullins 2004, pp ) Critical view of Fordism Benefits Fordism has proved to be extremely useful and beneficial to the organizations which implement them in their operations. Through the application of Fordism, the organizations can complete the mass production of the goods at the fraction of cost, in a very short time and with better quality of goods than which they used to have before the application of Fordism in their operations. With the use of standardization the same organization could complete their tasks with less workers, resource, tools and equipments than they could complete before the Fordism. For example with standard components of a product being used for example frame of black color, the organization need to only produce frame in black color which is cheaper and faster. Similarly the use of assembly lines can have tremendous effect on increasing the efficiency; effectiveness and productivity of the organizations as they reduce the time of production, eliminate the wastages involved in the turnover period. Moreover the use of worker motivating schemes like the Five Dollar Day scheme was such an idea which brought benefits to both the organizations and the workers. Such incentives to the workers have a drastic effect on the human resource issues the organizations face generally. Hence by having similar initiatives in the organizations,

6 the managers can substantially reduce the cases of absenteeism, attrition and worker turnover (Sánchez & Pérez 2001, pp ). The whole manufacturing process got revolutionized greatly after the introduction of the ideas of Fordism in the operations of the organizations as now it reduced the eliminated issues related to operations management and human resource management for the manufacturing organizations. Limitations The ideas proposed by Henry Ford also called Fordism also have some limitations which are pointed by the critics of Fordism. They argue that the ideas like standardization of the production process and the extensive use of assembly line like setup in the manufacturing only focus on improving the organization s profitability at the expense of the reduction of humanity and care for the workers. This feeling was portrayed by Charlie Chaplin in his film named The Modern Times where the assembly lines and the issues faced by the workers were displayed in a comic manner. They are of the view that Fordism is actually the means used by the managers to further the crony capitalism in the economies as they seem to benefit only the managers while ignoring the side effects these processes can have on the workers such as fatigue and job dissatisfaction. Not only the side effects are felt by the workers, but by the organizations themselves also. This is because in long run, the cost of the organizations increase as the issues related to absenteeism and worker attrition increase which harm the organizations in long run. Similarly the use of standardization is limited now a days as the customers have become more demanding and the competition in the market has increased (Volman, et al, 1992, pp ). This requires the organizations to offer more customized products to the users rather than standard products and thus the application of Fordism is become less important these days. Summary and Sustainability of Fordism We see that Fordism has been adopted by the organizations all over the world since its introduction by Henry Ford in The benefits include increase in operational efficiency, reduction in production cost and production time and many others. But it has also been that the organizations have modified Fordism in all these years as per their needs and requirements rather than implementing them in raw form which was proposed by Henry Ford. Also, the changes in the customers needs and the competitive environment have led managers to devise extensions of the ideas of Fordism which are also called as Post Fordism and are being implemented by the organizations. In order to remain competitive in changing business environment, the firms are

7 instead going for ways suggested by Post Fordism such as small batch runs, providing customized goods and offering flexibility in jobs to the employees which are beyond the ideas proposed under old Fordism. It is also seen that the organizations are working towards making their operations more humane which is different from the Fordism, since it doesn t consider human aspects and focuses only on operational efficiency (Pugh & Hickson, 1993, pp ). Thus it can be seen that the ideas of Fordism have sustained for almost 100 years and are still relevant today but there are necessary modifications done by the organizations even if they are against the basic foundations of the Fordism. Therefore it can be said that the Fordism is going to sustain but the organizations are going to be more humane form in coming future while designing their operations based on Fordism.

8 References Amin, A 1994, Post-Fordism: Models, fantasies, and phantoms of transition, in Post- Fordism: A Reader, ed. A. Amin, Blackwell, Oxford, pp Handfield, R. B & Nichols, L 2006, Production Facility Redesign. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, pp Heragu, S.S 1997, Facilities Design, PWS Publishing Company, Boston, MA, pp Krajewski, L. J & Rotzman, L. P 2002, Operations Management, Upper Saddle River, NJ, Prentice Hall, pp Lipietz, A1993, Fordism and post-fordism in Outhwaite, W & Bottomore, T, The Blackwell Dictionary of Twentieth Century Social Thought, Oxford, Blackwell, pp Mullins, L. J 2004, Management and Organizational Behavior, Financial Times Press, Prentice Hall Pearson Education Ltd, pp Panizzolo, R 2008, Applying the lessons learned from 27 automobile manufacturers: The relevance of value chain management, International Journal of Production Economics, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp Pugh, D.S & Hickson, D.J 1993, Great Writers on Organizations, Ashgate Publications, pp Sánchez, A.M & Pérez, M.P 2001, Lean indicators and value chain management strategies, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 12, No. 4, pp Steinmetz, G 2006, Fordism in Europe Since Encyclopedia of the Age of War and Reconstruction, eds. J. Merriman and J. Winter, Charles Scribner s Sons, New York, pp Volman, T, E; Berry, W.L & Whybark, D.C 1992, Manufacturing Planning and Control Systems, IRWIN, Burr Ridge, IL, pp