In 2016, I picked up Henry Ford’s book ‘My Life and Work’; it is one of the few books written by Ford, the founder of Ford Motor Company. The book details a lot about the start of the Company, including their business philosophy and production modalities. I like to share with you some of my jottings of the book and also provide the full pdf for you to download.
- Being greedy for money is the surest way not to get it but when “one serves for the sake of service – for satisfaction of doing that which one believes to be right- then money abundantly takes care of itself.”
- Money comes naturally as the result of service:
It means then that the most expensive materials are not necessarily the best and the best are not necessarily expensive.
- The big thing is the product and any hurry in getting into fabrication before designs are completed is just so much waste of time. I spent twelve years before I had a model T – which is what is known today at the Ford car-that suited me.
- Understanding the product before going into production: The more you understand your product, the more you can maneuver it to achieve your goal and you cannot understand the product without ample time to think and study it.
- Design before manufacture
- Planning before production.
- Pausing before pushing.
- Where most manufacturers find themselves quicker to make a change in the product than in the method of manufacturing – we follow in the opposite course.
- The materials in the car change as we learn more about materials… we have for most parts worked out substitute materials.
- But by not changing the product we are able to give our energy to the improvement of the making.
- The cutting edge of merchandising is the part where the product touches the consumer. An unsatisfactorily product is one that has a chill, a lot of waste effort is needed to put it through.
- Waste and greed block the delivery of true service, both waste and greed are unnecessary.
THE PRINCIPLES OF SERVICE FOR HENRY FORD
- An absence of fear of failure 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 way and means for progress.
- 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.
- The putting of service before profit; without profit business cannot extend, there is nothing inherently wrong about making a profit. Well-conducted business enterprise cannot fail to return profit but profit must and inevitably will come as a result for good service. It cannot be the basis – it must be the result of service.
- Manufacturing is 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.
CONTINUATION OF MY READING ON HENRY FORD
- There are those who cannot get far enough away from little things to see the big things- pg. 77
- Opportunist production from the purely money hand point is the least profitable.
- There are two kinds of waste: That of the prodigal who throws his substance away in riotous living and that of the sluggard who allows his substance to rot from non-use.
- The highest use of capital is not to make money but to make money do more service for the betterment of life.
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