Introduction to the Commemorative Edition

When I was a 19-year-old quality control engineer in Ford Motor Company’s co-op training program, a tour of the Ford Rouge Center was a required stop on the road to becoming a well-rounded young engineer. As much as I relished the chance to visit the birthplace of the Ford Mustang — launched at Dearborn Assembly Plant just two years earlier — anything built in 1917 was positively antiquated to my way of thinking. Of course, as we passed through the gates, my misguided skepticism gave way to awe at the sheer magnitude of Henry Ford’s vision.

The Ford Rouge Center was once the world’s largest integrated industrial site. You could stand at one end of the 1,100-acre complex and watch shiploads of ore and coal being unloaded from the docks on the Rouge River. You could watch steel being made in the blast furnaces of Rouge Steel. And you could watch cars roll off the assembly line at the other end of the complex — all in one day. At its peak, in the 1930s, more than 100,000 people worked there.

Thirty-six years later, I still see that awestruck look on the faces of today’s young engineers as they make their first pilgrimage to the Rouge. The truth is, I still feel a rush of adrenalin when I step onto what is truly hallowed ground in Ford’s history.

I experienced a similar feeling when I began reading Today and Tomorrow by Henry Ford. Today and Tomorrow is timeless. Within its pages, we find Henry Ford’s philosophy of lean manufacturing — the roots of today’s Ford Production System. Henry Ford was always generous with his knowledge of the industry. I was not surprised to learn that Taiichi Ohno, creator of Toyota’s groundbreaking just-in-time manufacturing system, credits Henry Ford as a major influence.

Today, Ford Motor Company is transforming the Rouge into a learning laboratory for safety, health and environmental innovation. The new assembly plant, expected to open in 2004, will be a flagship of Ford’s vision of sustainable manufacturing for the future. We’re taking the spirit of “flexible manufacturing” to a new level by designing a facility that can interchange three vehicle platforms and produce up to nine models.

We’re building in lean manufacturing principles. The new facilities will reduce normal inventory space by 50 percent and the number of workstations by about 40 percent — all while dramatically improving flow through the system. For improved safety, we’re installing a grid of overhead walkways and mezzanines to reduce pedestrian traffic in production areas. One of the plant’s most innovative features is the world’s largest “living roof,” a more than 10-acre rooftop garden expected to help control stormwater runoff, provide insulation and extend the life of the roof.

Henry Ford devotes an entire chapter of this book to education, or “Educating for Life.” I was truly inspired to read of his Henry Ford Trade School, an innovative school he started for orphans and other disadvantaged boys who would otherwise have had no chance to learn a trade. Decades after Henry Ford started his school, the company’s co-op education program made it possible for me, a Detroit native and one of 11 children, to pursue my dream of attending college and becoming an engineer. I hope you can imagine the pride I felt when I helped the UAW and Henry Ford Community College dedicate a new Michigan Technical Education Center on the site of the old Rotunda near the Rouge Center. This new center will train about 1,000 people a year in the technical skills needed by employers in the manufacturing and technology sectors of Detroit’s economy.

I am honored to help mark Ford’s centennial with this new edition of Today and Tomorrow. As Henry Ford once said, “Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress and working together is success.”

James J. Padilla

Group Vice President, Ford North America

Ford Motor Company

Dearborn, Michigan

December 2002