My Life and Work | Page 9

of merchandising is the point where
the product touches the consumer. An unsatisfactory product is one that
has a dull cutting edge. A lot of waste effort is needed to put it through.
The cutting edge of a factory is the man and the machine on the job. If
the man is not right the machine cannot be; if the machine is not right
the man cannot be. For any one to be required to use more force than is
absolutely necessary for the job in hand is waste.
The essence of my idea then is that waste and greed block the delivery
of true service. Both waste and greed are unnecessary. Waste is due
largely to not understanding what one does, or being careless in doing
of it. Greed is merely a species of nearsightedness. I have striven
toward manufacturing with a minimum of waste, both of materials and
of human effort, and then toward distribution at a minimum of profit,
depending for the total profit upon the volume of distribution. In the
process of manufacturing I want to distribute the maximum of
wage--that is, the maximum of buying power. Since also this makes for
a minimum cost and we sell at a minimum profit, we can distribute a
product in consonance with buying power. Thus everyone who is
connected with us--either as a manager, worker, or purchaser--is the
better for our existence. The institution that we have erected is
performing a service. That is the only reason I have for talking about it.
The principles of that service are these:
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
only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again. There is no
disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail. What is
past is useful only as it suggests ways and means for progress.
2. A disregard of competition. Whoever does a thing best ought to be
the one to do it. It is criminal to try to get business away from another
man--criminal because one is then trying to lower for personal gain the
condition of one's fellow man--to rule by force instead of by
intelligence.
3. The putting of service before profit. Without a profit, business
cannot extend. There is nothing inherently wrong about making a profit.
Well-conducted business enterprise cannot fail to return a profit, but
profit must and inevitably will come as a reward for good service. It
cannot be the basis--it must be the result of service.
4. Manufacturing is not buying low and selling high. It is the process of
buying materials fairly and, with the smallest possible addition of cost,
transforming those materials into a consumable product and giving it to
the consumer. Gambling, speculating, and sharp dealing, tend only to
clog this progression.
How all of this arose, how it has worked out, and how it applies
generally are the subjects of these chapters.
CHAPTER I
THE BEGINNING OF BUSINESS
On May 31, 1921, the Ford Motor Company turned out Car No.
5,000,000. It is out in my museum along with the gasoline buggy that I
began work on thirty years before and which first ran satisfactorily
along in the spring of 1893. I was running it when the bobolinks came
to Dearborn and they always come on April 2nd. There is all the
difference in the world in the appearance of the two vehicles and
almost as much difference in construction and materials, but in
fundamentals the two are curiously alike--except that the old buggy has

on it a few wrinkles that we have not yet quite adopted in our modern
car. For that first car or buggy, even though it had but two cylinders,
would make twenty miles an hour and run sixty miles on the three
gallons of gas the little tank held and is as good to-day as the day it was
built. The development in methods of manufacture and in materials has
been greater than the development in basic design. The whole design
has been refined; the present Ford car, which is the "Model T," has four
cylinders and a self starter--it is in every way a more convenient and an
easier riding car. It is simpler than the first car. But almost every point
in it may be found also in the first car. The changes have been brought
about through experience in the making and not through any change in
the basic principle--which I take to be an important fact demonstrating
that, given a good idea to start with, it is better to concentrate on
perfecting it than to hunt around for a new idea. One idea at a time is
about as much as any