From Fordism to Flexibility essays

From Fordism to Flexibility essays Throughout the history of the industrialized world, numerous managerial strategies have been implemented to make maximum profits and productivity a certainty, along with ensuring the utmost cost-efficiency. One of these methods put forth in the mid-twentieth century was known as Fordism. This refers to the system of mass production and consumption characteristic of increasingly developed economies during the 1940s-1960s (Sheppard sometimes referred to the "Japanese management system" (Fucini The pioneer of Fordism was none other than Henry Ford, who was and is a popular symbol of the transformation from an agricultural to an industrial, mass production, mass consumption economy. He first implemented his Fordist methods by virtue of his Ford Motor Company in the automobile industry, which is still the world's largest manufacturing activity today (Fucini s system was general standardization, which standardized components and manufacturing processes, and to create a simple, easy to manufacture, repairable standard product (Pierce, 2003). Standardization among the Fordist system required nearly perfect interchangeability of parts, which meant to quickly and concisely adapt to a continuous process (Sheppard & Barnes, 2003). This method of standardizing allowed Ford to insti...