Lessons From Henry Ford About Today’s Supply Chain Mess
The automobile pioneer believed short-term interests must not squeeze out investment in a business’ resilience, a lesson many companies have learned the hard way since 2020.
The American industrialist and inventor Henry Ford in Willow Run, Mich., around 1941. Credit... Hulton Archive/Getty Images
DEARBORN, Mich. — Henry Ford, the godfather of mass production, was tormented by the possibility of running out of parts and raw materials. Suspicious of financiers — a spirit that animated his fervent antisemitism — he was especially distrustful of his suppliers. He was consumed with stockpiling enough materials to ensure that his assembly lines could continue operating without debilitating shortages.
He bought his own coal mines in Kentucky and Virginia, along with railroads to carry their output to his factories. He amassed a fleet of ships that plied the Great Lakes, bearing a steady supply of iron ore and lumber harvested from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. And he erected an enormous plant outside Detroit on the River Rouge, a complex of factories engineered to handle every stage of turning raw materials into a finished automobile.
A century later, the Rouge plant remains in operation, yet it is bedeviled by a shortage of a crucial component that would have horrified Mr. Ford. The company he founded cannot buy enough semiconductors, the computer chips that are the brains of the modern-day car.
