Motor City: Ford, Mass Production and the Industrial Ecology of Detroit, 1908-1927

汽车城：福特，底特律的大规模生产和工业生态，1908-1927 年

• 批准号: 0849038
• 负责人: Ruth Cowan
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Pennsylvania
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-07-01 至 2010-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0849038&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Motor; City; Ford; Mass; Production

Between 1908 and 1923, annual production at the Ford Motor Company exploded from 6,000 to 1,800,000 automobiles. The company's meteoric rise propelled Henry Ford to national fame and made icons of the sprawling plants at Highland Park and River Rouge. This dissertation funded by the Science, Technology & Society Program argues that historians have overlooked a key development behind the advent of mass production: innovative systems of industrial logistics organized around "the purchasing function." Recent, empirical scholarship in business history indicates that Ford continued to buy half of the 5,000 parts in each Model T from outside suppliers until at least 1916, a year in which production reached 585,000 cars. Mass production at Ford was not only cutting-edge, it was double-edged. The assembly line facilitated an exceptional degree of internal synchronization, but it also entailed an unprecedented level of external coordination. This project examines Detroit as the site of an industrial network, investigating systems of inter-firm control and the urban landscape on which they depended. It studies automotive purchasing agents as technical experts and the reconstruction of manufacturing districts where the automobile industry's "outside suppliers" made their niche. The project assesses mass production in Detroit as a political as well as a technological achievement by combining the history of industrial procurement with the history of municipal growth. Although a spate of scholarship related to Japanese models of "just-in-time inventory" and "supply chain management" has appeared since the 1980s, the history of early industrial procurement in the U.S. has yet to be written. This project reframes the history of mass production in terms of manufacturing networks and industrial districts. It contributes to literature concerned with industrial practice, business organization, standards and standardization, "regional advantage," and the history of the automobile.

从1908年到1923年，福特汽车公司的年产量从6000辆激增到180万辆。该公司的迅速崛起推动亨利·福特在全国范围内声名鹊起，并成为高地公园和鲁日河的大型工厂的标志。这篇由科学、技术和社会计划资助的论文认为，历史学家忽略了大规模生产出现背后的一个关键发展：围绕“购买功能”组织的工业物流创新系统。最近，商业史上的经验研究表明，福特继续从外部供应商购买每款Model T的5000个零部件中的一半，直到1916年，那一年的产量达到58.5万辆。福特的大规模生产不仅是尖端的，而且是双刃剑。装配线促进了异常程度的内部同步，但也需要前所未有的外部协调。该项目将底特律作为一个工业网络的所在地，调查公司间控制系统及其所依赖的城市景观。它研究作为技术专家的汽车采购商，以及汽车业“外部供应商”占据其利基市场的制造地区的重建。该项目通过将工业采购的历史与市政发展的历史相结合，将底特律的大规模生产评估为一项政治和技术成就。尽管自20世纪80年代以来，与日本的“准时制库存”和“供应链管理”模式相关的学术研究层出不穷，但美国早期工业采购的历史尚未被书写。这个项目从制造网络和工业区的角度重塑了大规模生产的历史。它提供了有关工业实践、商业组织、标准和标准化、“区域优势”和汽车历史的文献。