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So we're talking today about the innovation of the assembly line. Now to understand the assembly line, let's go
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back to another innovation and that is the innovation of the car. Around 1900, there were dozens if not hundreds of car
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makers in the market, but all of them were expensive. Henry Ford's brilliant idea was to shift
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the focus of innovation from the product to the process, the workflow that was used to build that car. So in 1913,
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Ford's Highland plant pioneered the first assembly line. The assembly line brought together two
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key principles. First was the idea of specialization of the division of labor. If you do just one thing, chances are
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you get really good at that. And also, if you only do one thing, I can hire unskilled labor to make that happen. So
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that makes a process scalable. The other key idea behind the assembly line was the idea of the moving line. The car as
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it gets assembled moves through the process. So it flows to the worker as opposed to the worker going to the car.
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So what we saw was advances in precision machining. They created a market for interchangeable components. With
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interchangeable parts, you could just focus on the assembly. Basically, putting together a car became like
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building something out of Lego. Second was the emergence of scientific management. And we here at Wharton had a
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big part in that. So Frederick Wins of Taylor wrote his famous book the principles of scientific management and
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Frank and Lillian Gilbreth pioneered the concept of time and motion studies. On the demand side the US was blessed with
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a growing middle class. People were looking for things like cars and other assembled goods which created a massive
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market and then on the supply side we had cheap immigrant labor and I would say those four factors together created
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the perfect storm. The assembly line has made products like the car affordable to the mass market.
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It has given jobs and economic opportunities to millions of people. And so the idea of a process of a flow of an
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assembly line remains critical today. And so when you go as a consumer out and you consume a burger at McDonald's,
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you're benefiting from the principles developed by Henry Ford. These days I am concerned that many of
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these lessons get forgotten. I would say the United States has developed like a muscle atrophy when it comes to building
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stuff. The United States and the Western democracies are challenged by arms races
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and military conflict that require us to build missiles, ammunition, drones. We need mass production and assembly lines
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for growth. Similarly, when you think about the war on climate change, in order to stay sustainable in our
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society, we need mass production of electric cars, mass production of solar system, of batteries, and all of that
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requires us to remember the principles of Henry Ford. The assembly line has moved our thinking
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from what you're producing, from the product or service, the what, to the how. How am I producing? How do I
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organize the workflow and the process? As we think about the future, human beings, machines, robots, AI will have
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to work together in ways that we cannot imagine. I think the lesson of the Ford assembly line is again we have to be
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intentional about designing those workflows of the future. We have to think how to work and not just what we
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want to produce.