Looking at the Highlights of the Rouge
Last week, in this five part series, we took a look at how the new Rouge tour would run. Today, the facility's highlights will be featured, along with some specific innovations regarding its application for building Ford's all-new F-150 pickup.
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| The "Rouge Plant" employed more than 100,000 people in 1929 when the Model A was being made. (Photo: Ford Motor Company) |
The original Rouge River facility was, in large part, designed by architect Albert Kahn, the son of four German immigrants whose family arrived in Detroit when he was 11 years old in 1880. One of Kahn's first jobs for Henry Ford was designing the Highland Park plant, which opened in 1910. Highland Park is where the continuous moving assembly line was used in 1914 to make Model Ts, allowing Ford to actually make cars for the masses and reduce production costs while doubling the average worker's daily wage to 5 dollars a day for eight hours. The standard working day in 1914 was 9+ hours.
Henry Ford conceived of the Rouge initially as a supplier plant to Highland Park, where he would erect a massive steel making operation, but World War I intervened and Ford Motor was tapped to build the Eagle Boat submarine chasers. Kahn designed the four-story tall "Building B" where the Eagle Boats were made and this building was later converted into Dearborn Assembly where tractors, cars and trucks eventually came from, including the legendary Mustang. Building B was also used to house things from the Henry Ford Trade School to the Rouge complex's hospital.
Then Ford went into its experiment with vertical integration, where the Rouge became a vast, interconnected series of factories. It employed more than 100,000 people in 1929 when the Model A was being made. In many ways it used to operate as one plant, which is why many Detroiters still refer to it as "the Rouge plant." When new manufacturing technology came along, old technology automatically became obsolete and was modified or removed no matter how new or costly it was.