Henry Ford, born in 1863, belongs to a generation of American industrialists. He was one of the founders of the Ford Motor Company. He also authored the famous the assembly line techniques of mass production and thus belongs to management pioneers.

Ford was born in Greenfield Township in Michigan to family of Irish and Belgian immigrants. He was claimed to have dismantled as well as reassembled watches belonging to friends and neighbors at the age of 15. Ford was shocked by the death of his mother, who deceased in 1876 and also by the prospects of becoming a farmer, which was a fate expected by his father. Ford however did not like the farm work. In 1879 , Henry Ford leaves his work in order to work as a machinist.

The employing company was based in Detroit and it was called James F. Flower & Bros., while in his second employment he work for the Detroit Dry Dock Co., which he left in 1882. He left in order to work on the farm. Here, he had his first contact with the steam engine. He was so good in repair of these types of machine, that later one, he was hired by Westinghouse company in order to repair their steam machines. During this era, young Henry Ford was also involved in bookkeeping studies at Goldsmith, Bryan & Stratton Business College. Aged 25, he married Clara Bryant and worked on his farm as well as running a company which owned a a sawmill.

After being employed at the Edison Illuminating Co. and his promotion to principal engineer in 1893, he acquired enough means to focus on gasoline motors, culminating with creation of his own creation, a vehicle denominated the Ford Quadricycle, which became his first car. At the age of 36 he was introduced to Thomas Edison and built his second vehicle. The production of this vehicle was however not successful and the company was closed down for bankruptcy in 1901.In the same year he met C. Wills, who helped him to build another 26 horsepower vehicle, which was the first successful vehicle produced by Ford. This led to creation of the Detroit Automobile Company. The start of Ford as a famous car producer starts here, including to evolution of new management techniques including the mass belt production.
Henry Ford included in his management techniques several revolutionary elements. One of them was the five-dollar workday. This element that is today counted as a part of “welfare capitalism” was thought to improve the conditions of his employees working in the car production. The pay was however conditioned by hard work and extreme efficiency. The rate offered was more than double of the traditional pay. The decision however showed high profitability as he acquired the best human capital available in Detroit and raised his productivity which in turn led to further competitive advantages. In 1913, Ford implemented another innovation applying moving assembly lines into his factories. Such implementation permitted rapid increase in mass production and sales rocketed high, while production costs sank. The produced Ford Model T became a national hit and Ford became one of industrial icons.

The application of new elements into management became known as Fordism. Known as implementation of standardized, low cost mass production techniques, meritocratic pay as well as the inventions of Taylorism and scientific management discoveries helped to rationalize the production and raise the output(Maier, 1970). Fordism was crucial for the industrial development of the world as the production model was soon copied elsewhere, also in other countries and other sectors and thus changed the landscape of the industry worldwide(Rae, 1969). Fordism, as a concept, was also used to symbolize the post-war boom of production volume and utility of western democracies.

It could be typified as mas consumption symbol, also related to mass production techniques, happening in protected domestic markets in countries which applied Keynesian economic regulations (Tolliday et al., 1987). Fordism found continuity in Post-Fordism and Neo-Fordism, which are represented by new information technologies, niche markets marketing and predominance of services over manufacturing, feminization of the workforce as well as globalization of financial markets, privatization and neoliberalism based policies. Some literary authors have used Fordism as a symbol for a certain era in human history, such as Aldous Huxley in his novel Brave New World, where the society adopts the principles of mass production not only to production but as well to governance of the society.