Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know About How Artists Work

bins. Average assembly time was about 20 minutes. Purdy

divided the job into 29 operations performed by 29 men as the

magnetos passed in front of them on a continuously moving

belt. This arrangement cut assembly time to an average of 13

minutes and 10 seconds. When, some months later, the belt

was moved up off the floor so the men no longer had to stoop

to pick up and replace the magnetos, the time dropped further

to seven minutes. Further study of individual operations

brought the time down to five minutes. As soon as Ford could

sell enough cars to need this many magnetos, a savings in time

of 75% resulted, each man on the line producing as much as