My Life and Work

Business is merely work. Speculation in things already produced—that is not business.

The payment of five dollars a day for an eight-hour day was one of the finest cost-cutting moves we ever made, and the six-dollar day wage is cheaper…

We have only started on our development of our country--we have not as yet, with all our talk of wonderful progress, done more than scratch the…

I have no quarrel with the general attitude of scoffing at new ideas. It is better to be skeptical of all new ideas and to insist upon being shown…

The natural thing to do is to work--to recognize that prosperity and happiness can be obtained only through honest effort. Human ills flow largely…

Russia could not get along without intelligence and experience. As soon as she began to run her factories by committees, they went to rack and ruin;…

One of the counsels of caution is to be very certain that we do not mistake a reactionary turn for a return of common sense. We have passed through a…

The primary functions are agriculture, manufacture, and transportation. Community life is impossible without them. They hold the world together.…

There is plenty of work to do. Business is merely work. Speculation in things already produced--that is not business. It is just more or less…

The welfare of the country is squarely up to us as individuals. That is where it should be and that is where it is safest. Governments can promise…

There is little chance of an intelligent people, such as ours, ruining the fundamental processes of economic life. Most men know they cannot get…

The economic fundamental is labour. Labour is the human element which makes the fruitful seasons of the earth useful to men. It is men's labour…

It is very easy, unless one keeps a plan thoroughly in mind, to get burdened with money and then, in an effort to make more money, to forget all…

The producer depends for his prosperity upon serving the people. He may get by for a while serving himself, but if he does, it will be purely…

Money comes naturally as the result of service. And it is absolutely necessary to have money. But we do not want to forget that the end of money is…

On my own farm at Dearborn we do everything by machinery. We have eliminated a great number of wastes, but we have not as yet touched on real economy…

Lack of knowledge of what is going on and lack of knowledge of what the job really is and the best way of doing it are the reasons why farming is…

The way to attain low-priced, high-volume production in the factory or on the farm--and low-priced, high-volume production means plenty for everyone-…

We are constantly experimenting with new ideas. If you travel the roads in the neighbourhood of Dearborn you can find all sorts of models of Ford…

1. An absence of fear of the future and of veneration for the past. One who fears the future, who fears failure, limits his activities. Failure is…

3. The putting of service before profit. Without a profit, business cannot extend. There is nothing inherently wrong about making a profit.…

There was too much hard hand labour on our own and all other farms of the time. Even when very young I suspected that much might somehow be done in a…

During all this time I kept my position with the electric company and gradually advanced to chief engineer at a salary of one hundred and twenty-five…

I have the dynamo that I first had charge of at the Detroit Edison Company. When I started our Canadian plant I bought it from an office building…

The Edison Company offered me the general superintendency of the company but only on condition that I would give up my gas engine and devote myself…

I rented a shop--a one-story brick shed--at 81 Park Place to continue my experiments and to find out what business really was. I thought that it must…

Business men believed that you could do anything by "financing" it. If it did not go through on the first financing then the idea was to "refinance."…

I determined absolutely that never would I join a company in which finance came before the work or in which bankers or financiers had a part. And…

That is getting some years ahead of the story, but it is control by finance that breaks up service because it looks to the immediate dollar. If the…

There is also the great fear of being thought a fool. So many men are afraid of being considered fools. I grant that public opinion is a powerful…

The man who has the largest capacity for work and thought is the man who is bound to succeed. I cannot pretend to say, because I do not know, whether…

(2) That thinking first of money instead of work brings on fear of failure and this fear blocks every avenue of business--it makes a man afraid of…

In the little brick shop at 81 Park Place I had ample opportunity to work out the design and some of the methods of manufacture of a new car. Even if…

Standardization (to use the word as I understand it) is not just taking one's best selling article and concentrating on it. It is planning day and…

These ideas were forming with me during this year of experimenting. Most of the experimenting went into the building of racing cars. The idea in…

Our purpose is to construct and market an automobile specially designed for everyday wear and tear--business, professional, and family use; an…

Men who are constantly complaining of shortage of time and lamenting the fewness of days in the week--men to whom every five minutes wasted means a…

The business went along almost as by magic. The cars gained a reputation for standing up. They were tough, they were simple, and they were well made.…

Our little wooden shop had, with the business we were doing, become totally inadequate, and in 1906 we took out of our working capital sufficient…

We had been through an experimenting period of five years. The cars were beginning to be sold in Europe. The business, as an automobile business then…

(6) A comprehensive bookkeeping system and a follow-up sales system, so that it may be instantly apparent what is the financial status of the various…

In conclusion we beg to state if there are any prospective automobile buyers who are at all intimidated by the claims made by our adversaries that we…

Now I am not outlining the career of the Ford Motor Company for any personal reason. I am not saying: "Go thou and do likewise." What I am trying…

Indeed, there was some disposition to take this stand. Some of the stockholders were seriously alarmed when our production reached one hundred cars a…

He found eventually that it was a French steel and that there was vanadium in it. We tried every steel maker in America--not one could make…

The company was then five years old. The original factory space had been .28 acre. We had employed an average of 311 people in the first year,…

During the season 1908-1909 we continued to make Models "R" and "S," four-cylinder runabouts and roadsters, the models that had previously been so…

"I will build a motor car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It…

Nobody knows how many thousand times it has been asked since. It is asked only because of the failure to grasp that a principle rather than an…

It is self-evident that a majority of the people in the world are not mentally--even if they are physically--capable of making a good living. That is…

It is not possible, without going deeply into technical processes, to present the whole development of manufacturing, step by step, in the order in…

A Ford car contains about five thousand parts--that is counting screws, nuts, and all. Some of the parts are fairly bulky and others are almost the…

The first step forward in assembly came when we began taking the work to the men instead of the men to the work. We now have two general principles…

The net result of the application of these principles is the reduction of the necessity for thought on the part of the worker and the reduction of…

This is a development which holds exceptional consequences, for it means, as I shall enlarge in a later chapter, that highly standardized, highly…

Highland Park now has five hundred departments. Down at our Piquette plant we had only eighteen departments, and formerly at Highland Park we had…

Hardly a week passes without some improvement being made somewhere in machine or process, and sometimes this is made in defiance of what is called…

The factory keeps no record of experiments. The foremen and superintendents remember what has been done. If a certain method has formerly been…

They told us we could not cast gray iron by our endless chain method and I believe there is a record of failures. But we are doing it. The man who…

We used to rivet the crank-case arms to the crank-case, using pneumatic hammers which were supposed to be the latest development. It took six men…