If you wanted to buy a model T in 1914 what colors would you choose from?

abril 07, 2022 Postar um comentário

You can have whatever colour, every bit long as it'southward black

Motor vehicle manufacturing every bit a parallel to document engineering

By Tony Self

An allegory is a means of representing an idea using symbolic representation. It is a kind of extended metaphor. It occurs to me that motor vehicle manufacturing tin can be used as an apologue for the business of technical communication. Let me explicate... from the outset.

The motor car was invented in Europe (Germany, to be specific), and at the offset of the 20th Century, virtually motor vehicles were fabricated in Europe. Nosotros may think of the United States as the home of the motor auto, but in 1902, a full of 314 cars was produced in America. By contrast, the most prolific motor manufacturing country, French republic, produced 23,000 cars in that same year. Belgium was producing far more cars than the US. But merely 4 years later, in 1906, the U.s.a. overtook all other machine manufacturing nations when it produced 58,000 cars. Then how did the U.s. transform from a car manufacturing backwater to a powerhouse? One reason was that America was a wealthy country, and at the kickoff of the 20th century, only rich people could beget cars. Although America had lots of rich people, for motor vehicle manufacturing to be a big industry, it needed to develop a mass market. http://www.uniquecarsandparts.com.au/lost_marques.htm

The man credited with working out how to create a mass market for cars was Henry Ford. He started with the premise that for more people to exist able to beget cars, cars needed to exist cheaper. This thought sounds simple plenty, simply in reality, it meant bringing the cost of a motorcar downwards from effectually $4000 (twice the average annual income) to less than $1000. Different manufacturing ideas had already been introduced, such as outsourcing (the Olds company came up with this when their manufacturing plant burned down) and using standardised parts that could exist interchanged amid several models (an thought developed by Cadillac). Remember, this is an allegory, so the words "outsourcing" and "interchange" are important to note.

In 1908, Henry Ford introduced the "assembly line" for motor vehicle construction. The showtime car model to be produced on the product line was the Model T. The assembly or production line replaced the "coachbuilding" method of edifice cars (where cars were built individually, i past one).

The Model T Ford

Ford'south assembly line was what we would now call "transformative process applied science". The assembly line was built on a foundation of standardisation: standard processes to produce unproblematic components in a standardised product system. To sympathise how standardisation created such an opportunity for efficiency, we need to know the methods that preceded those of Ford. (The terms "standard processes", "elementary components", and "standardised production systems" are central to the apologue.)

Coachbuilding Tradition

Before the associates line, motor vehicles were fabricated by artisans. Purchasing a motor vehicle was a two-stride process: first you would purchase a chassis (from a "chassis maker"), so you lot would have information technology to a "coachbuilder". The chassis maker would supply the chassis, the drive train (engine, gears, axles and wheels), the pause, the radiator, and the steering arrangement. The coachbuilder would build a body for the chassis to conform the client's needs. If the customer needed four seats, the coachbuilder would build a four-seat cabin. If the customer needed a small truck, the coachbuilder would build a two-seat motel with a tray on the aforementioned chassis. The chassis maker worked in metal, and the coachbuilder worked in wood and leather. Sometimes, chassis makers and coachbuilders would team upward to offer a packaged product. For example, Fisher Trunk teamed up with Cadillac to build all the closed-torso Cadillacs of the 1910s.

The Chassis Maker's Product - Royce 15196

coachbuild.com

The Coachbuilder's Boast - No Two Alike

Even after Henry Ford's assembly line had transformed manufacturing and half of all cars in America were Model Ts, coachbuilding persisted.

In sharp contrast to Ford, Rolls-Royce was very slow to embrace the assembly line. Up until World War 2, every Rolls-Royce was produced by artisans in the coachbuilding tradition, every bit a rolling chassis to be later sent to an contained coachbuilder.

In the 1960s, information technology became popular for the wealthy to utilize coachbuilders as a way of creating sectional and expensive versions of mass-produced (assembly line) cars, including the apprehensive Mini. Hooper, the Rolls-Royce coachbuilders, created the outset luxury Mini in 1963 at four times the cost of a standard Mini. The nearly famous of the Hooper Minis was one owned past Peter Sellers; this auto featured a hand-stencilled wicker-work effect torso decoration. Radford Coachbuilders produced the Radford Mini de Ville, which was snapped up by celebrities such every bit Britt Ekland, all four of the Beatles, Mike Nesmith (of the Monkees), and Marianne Faithful. A standard Mini Cooper cost 850 pounds; a Radford cost ii,500.

Mini de Ville advertisement

A Coachbuilt Mini for the Wealthy

Even today, over a century after the introduction of Ford'south assembly line, coachbuilders even so exist, but they have become niche companies servicing the wealthy. Automobile manufacturers with a reliance on coachbuilding are now all but extinct. (The Rolls-Royce company was broken up in 1998, and the brand is now endemic by BMW. Rolls-Royce cars are now produced using assembly line techniques, with 20% of the current model Rolls-Royce Ghost being shared components of the BMW 7 Series.)

Now remember, this is supposed to be an allegory. How is this history of car manufacturing symbolic of the business organisation of technical advice? I'll become to that shortly...

Any colour, and then long equally information technology'south blackness

The assembly line is a manufacturing process where parts are added to a product in a sequential style using "division of labour", where 1 person repeatedly performs but one small portion of the unabridged process. Practically speaking, this ways that 1 person's job might be to hammer the spokes into the wheels; nothing more, aught less. The spoke hammerer becomes an skillful at spoke hammering, and becomes more than and more than efficient at that task. If the spokes and the wheels arrive at the spoke hammerer'south position at exactly the right time, and this is repeated for all the unlike tasks in the line, the car tin can be produced at the lowest unit toll.

I of Henry Ford's famous quotes about the Model T was, "Any customer tin take a automobile painted any color that he wants, and then long as information technology is blackness."

The Model T only came in blackness because the production line required compromise and then that efficiency and improved quality could be achieved. Spraying dissimilar colours would take required a break in the production line, meaning increased costs, more than staff, more equipment, a more complicated process, and the risk of the incorrect color existence practical.

Ford - The Universal Car

The Model T - The Universal Motorcar

Using the car manufacturing metaphor, we can say that technical communication is still largely in the coachbuilding era, where artisans hand-craft unique document products using all-in-one tools such every bit FrameMaker, Word, RoboHelp, and Flare. Non-standard products with not-interchangeable components are produced, at a cost that only the wealthy customers and employers tin can afford. Technical communication every bit a profession risks going the way of coachbuilders... still around, but equally an eccentric coterie producing lovely and obsolete products that very few tin can afford.

Certain, there has been some "transfer of skill to the equipment" (a feature of the "American System" of production), but not systemic changes to the production procedure.

Allow's look at the parallels...

Parallels

In the coachbuilding era, a single craftsman or team of craftsmen would create each role of a product. They would use their skills (developed over years equally an apprentice) and tools to create the individual parts. Those same craftsmen would then get together the parts into the concluding production, making "trial and mistake" changes in the parts until they fitted.

This is the aforementioned approach that many technical authors currently apply to produce manuals. A single writer or squad of authors creates each office of a manual. They use their skills and tools such as word processors and page layout software to create the private chapters, pages and images. They then assemble them into the final manual, making "trial and error" changes to the layout until the text fits.

Let'south analyse this allegory a footling further. The assembly line was made possible by two major technological developments:

toolpath control (where jigs and templates provided a means for repeatable, consistent use of tools)
machine tools (such as power drills, lathes and milling machines)

These developments not simply improved quality, only enabled "interchangeable parts". In coachbuilding, bordering parts were fabricated to fit each other. In assembly lines, different parts needed to be made in isolation, yet had to fit together when assembled. In document engineering science, the equivalent idea is known as "interchangeability"; blocks of text from i document need to exist able to work in different documents, and content produced by different authors and even different companies needs to be able to fit together without rework.

The associates line built on ideas from the Industrial Revolution and before. The "American System" of production of the early 19th Century used the ideas of:

division of labour
technology tolerance
interchangeable parts

Another feature of the American system was the "transfer of skill to the equipment", allowing the use of semi-skilled or unskilled machine operators. When contemplating the touch on of document engineering on the technical advice profession, this is thought provoking to say the least!

Interchangeability relies on "tolerance", and tolerance is divers through standards. Some people claim that moving away from coachbuilder writing volition pb to a loss of quality. Certain, there are compromises that accept to be fabricated (any color as long as it's black), but diverseness may not be quality. Mass production requires components to be built to higher engineering tolerances than manus-crafting. For parts to be interchanged, they have to be of consistent quality, and a quality that is specified. Certificate engineering, provided it is working to fine tolerances, produces consistently better quality than hand-crafting.

Better, Faster, Stronger

Some technical communicators have embraced the assembly line arroyo, which is cheaper, and produces a higher quality product. (What quality actually means is for another fourth dimension, simply quality is not the same as luxury. A walnut dashboard isn't necessarily better quality than a plastic one.)

Recall Ford'due south aim of producing a car that costed $m instead of $4000? A Model T toll $825 in 1908, but was $575 by 1912. The price of the Model T kept dropping as the product line process was improved, and the skills of workers developed. At the end of the product run, the toll was $300, and a total of 15 1000000 Model Ts had been produced. Even Ford'southward own factory workers could afford to buy a Model T. Without undergoing a revolutionary change in approach, are our certificate products going to get cheaper and cheaper? Not if we stick with coachbuilding!

Like toolpath control and machine tools, XML and DITA are catalysts that can revolutionise technical communication, taking information technology from coachbuilding to the associates line and beyond. (We'll find out what followed the assembly line afterwards.) XML and DITA: these 2 standards allow data "interchange", "outsourcing", "specialisation of labour", "simple re-usable components", and "standardised publication systems", but they also need skilled technical authors. XML and DITA also make information technology possible to reduce the cost of documentation to the same degree that associates-line reduced the cost of cars.

DITA projects sometimes fail because authors endeavour to replicate the coachbuilding approach. They want to keep offering manuals in a colour other than black. Projects also fail because authors are not skilled in the new techniques of structured, componentised, topic-centric authoring. Ford faced the same upshot of worker skills.

Ford recognised that the skills of the workers had a directly impact on quality and efficiency, so opened a worker preparation college, and paid his workers a handsome wage of $five per day. This wage was seen as extraordinarily loftier (double the going rate for manufactory workers), and Ford added money direction courses to the grooming programme to ensure his employees used their wages responsibly! And on tiptop of that, he cutting one hr off the working day. Ford's profit doubled in the 3 years after the introduction of the worker grooming college.

Each Ford worker was a specialist, and was recognised equally such. Likewise, DITA authors are specialists: document engineers that need to exist recognised as such.

Many of Ford'due south workers were immigrants who did non speak English, and could not read or write. The Training College provided some of the necessary skills, merely on-the-job lean training was also employed. The assembly line divided labour into small, repeatable tasks.

Ford had built 15 million Model Ts past the time the product line was closed downward in 1927. That makes information technology the 2nd largest production run of any car (behind the VW Beetle, with 21 million). The product line made cars affordable, and enormously expanded the market. Even workers at the Ford factory could beget a Model T.

These days, most cars seem to be High german, or Japanese. Unless you live in the US, where nearly cars are American, aren't they?

In 1898, Henry Ford's company made one Quadricycle. He made some other in 1899, and a third one in 1900. These cars were hand-congenital. At the zenith of Model T product, one auto rolled off the assembly line every 60 seconds.

Beyond the Assembly Line - Automation

Henry Ford's assembly line was embraced by all manufacturing industries. This resulted in lower costs of mass-produced manufactured goods, and led, rightly or wrongly, to the " consumer culture". Only progress didn't cease at the assembly line, and neither does this allegory.

The associates line method of auto manufacture remained the norm until the 1980s, when many of the production line jobs previously performed by humans were automatic. "Robots", as they were initially described, took over a lot of precision, dangerous or repetitive processes. Non only did automation lead to more consistent components, merely worker injuries, including repetitive strain injuries, were reduced. Today, 50 per cent of all robots are used in car manufacture. Japanese auto manufacturers were the kickoff to take advantage of robots, and the perception of quality of Japanese cars was reversed. In the 1970s, Japanese cars ( "Jap Crap") were considered of inferior quality to American or European cars. By the turn of the century, Japanese manufacturer was synonymous with consistently adept quality. While robots replaced humans on the production line, they too created higher paid, college skilled and intellectually stimulating jobs in computer-aided design and manufacture.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/03/robots.html

Automation in automobile manufacture

1 of the huge benefits of DITA (and other types of XML) is the opportunity for document automation. In many cases, DITA topics can exist automatically generated. For example, Visma Software developed a niggling software utility that generates xiii,000 reference topics documenting database structures automatically, in less than an hour. As in the Japanese automobile industry, automation of deadening, repetitive documentation tasks remove drudgery and get out authors to tackle the more intellectually stimulating tasks.

Read more than: Robots in Car Manufacturing | eHow.com http://world wide web.ehow.com/about_4678910_robots-car-manufacturing.html#ixzz1Y020mjyt

Toyota was the most successful of the Japanese manufacturers. Not merely was automation embraced, but every endeavour was made to make every stage of the production process more than efficient. By the 1990s, the American manufacturers began re-working their ain production processes to follow the lead of Toyota, but with trivial success. While American companies adopted the Japanese systems, they didn't necessarily adopt the philosophy. The Toyota method is known as "TPS (Toyota Product Organisation)". TPS is an integrated socio-technical system of management philosophies and practices. Information technology is built effectually continuous improvement, and respect for people. TPS has been adopted widely outside Toyota as "lean manufacturing" and "just-in-time (JIT) production".

Automation really ways "the automation of drudgery".

Where now for technical communication?

The catalysts for alter are here. As technical communicators, we take to make decisions on what path we accept. We can choose to fight on as coachbuilders, finding a romantic niche as crafters of expensive, high-stop, bespoke, non-standard documentation products. We can choose to move to the efficient production line, embracing the division of labour, working to standards (engineering tolerance), writing for interchangeability, and transferring as many tasks as possible to automation.

The primary catalyst for change is XML-based structured authoring approaches, and in particular DITA. As for "TPS", transition to DITA is most successfully when information technology is used every bit an integrated socio-technical arrangement of writing philosophies and practices. Every bit the famous sage Anonymous once said, "if you don't create modify, modify volition create you lot".

Ford produced a high quality production with low cost by standardisation, compromise, interchange, good architecture, and an educated, well-paid workforce. It is a myth to think that standardisation results in lower quality. By many measures, the Model T was the all-time car Ford ever produced, and was in product for 20 years.

The semi-automated assembly line approach is the one that should exist taken with DITA and XML. If we try to comprise all the features of the coachbuilding style of producing documents, we volition lose many of the efficiency and quality control benefits of the new DITA and XML methodology. Every bit well as vision, investment of time and equipment is required to movement from coachbuilding to assembly line to automation of drudgery, but that investment is worthwhile.

Postscript

Model Ts were originally offered in a bluish, ruddy, green and grey. From 1913, black was the just option. More than xxx unlike types of black paint were used on unlike components, and blackness was the cheapest, almost durable, and easiest to colour-match.

Ford near went broke when they tried to produce multiple products with multiple options in the 1930s. Merely retained profits from the Model T saved the company. http://www.icms.net/lean_at_ford.htm

It is estimated that as many as 150,000 Model Ts withal exist, with perhaps 20,000 still on the route. http://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/118802/147456.html?1277497256

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Sherman Thenthen