The production system that Henry Ford introduced in 1913 at his plant in Highland Park, Michigan.
Ford wanted to drastically reduce product lead time and human effort through a series of innovations. These included:
- Consistently interchangeable parts so that cycle times could remain stable for each operation within a line;
- The line itself (i.e., the assembly line);
- Process redesign where machines were arranged in process sequence so that parts flowed quickly and smoothly from one machine to another;
- And a system for regulating the rate of production that ensured that the production rate of parts manufacturing was in line with the rate of consumption of parts at final assembly.
