Henry Ford established Ford Motor Company in 1903 in Dearborn, Michigan. At this time, only the rich could afford to purchase vehicles, and Ford wanted to make a vehicle that the common person could afford. The Model A was the first vehicle produced by the company. This model was followed by several more over the first five years of the company's existence. In 1908 the most famous model, the Model T, made its debut and was the catalyst for the company's operations efficiency and mass production.

In the early years, the production of vehicles was designed so that one worker built an entire vehicle over the course of about 8.5 hours. Henry Ford, whose purpose was to mass produce an affordable vehicle, was always searching for ways to make the production process more efficient in terms of time and cost. In order to accomplish this, he set the vehicles up at assembly stations and designated each worker with a specified task. The workers would then go to each stand and perform their specific duty on each vehicle. This reduced worker production time from 8.5 hours to 2.5 minutes. However, some workers were faster than others, creating a bottleneck in the production process. By 1913, Ford had perfected the system with a moving assembly line. Workers remained stationary while the vehicle came to them when it was ready for their specialized task. This further reduced the amount of inputs (not only time, but parts as well) needed to produce the final output throughout the transformation process. The assembly line served as the model for the cost-effective, mass-production assembly-line concept still used today.....

Question

1. Describe some of the different processes Ford has used to improve its operational capacity.
2. How has Six Sigma improved the quality of Ford vehicles?
3. Why does Ford consider it important to develop a global car?