The Engineered Factory

Abstract

The Engineered Factory LINDY BIGGS The story of the rational, engineered factory as conceived by indus­ trial engineers is a new chapter in the history of mass production. We know about the 19th-century changes in technology, about the revolutionary conception of interchangeable parts and increasing di­ vision of labor, but we know little about how 20th-century industrial engineers organized the increasingly complex components of mass production as they redesigned the factory.1 Much of the history of modern production technology involves the factory in some way—the machines, the workers, the managers—but the factory building—its design, layout, and construction—has re­ ceived far less attention than the manufacturing process or its prod­ uct.2 The factory building can be viewed in at least two ways: as an artifact of industrial change and as a dynamic element in the produc­ tion process. In this article I examine the latter, the way factory design became increasingly important to production in the early 20th cen­ tury. As engineers began to consider the factory building as a major component of the production process, the building became part of production technology, considered by some engineers to be “the mas­ ter machine.” Behind the changing attitudes about the factory at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century lay the new and rapidly growing profession of industrial engineering. Through their strong Dr. Biggs is associate professor of history at Auburn University. 'See Merritt Roe Smith, Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology (Ithaca, N.Y., 1977), and David Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production (Baltimore, 1984), for development of interchangeable parts and mass production. 2Notable exceptions are John Coolidge, Mill and Mansion (New York, 1942), on the development of Lowell, Massachusetts; Reyner Banham, Concrete Atlantis (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), on American industrial architecture and its relationship to modern archi­ tecture; William Pearson, American Buildings and Their Architects (New York, 1986). See also Jennifer Tann, The Development ofthe Factory (London, 1970), on the early English factory. Daniel Nelson gives minor treatment to factory buildings in his Managers and Workers (Madison, Wis., 1975); and Alfred Chandler acknowledges the significance of factory planning and design in The Visible Hand (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), but does not elaborate the point.© 1995 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/95/3602-0013SO1.00 S174 The Engineered Factory S175 belief in systemization and rationalization, industrial engineers tried to solve complex problems in production and industrial organization that plagued turn-of-the-century manufacturers. The engineers changed almost everything about the factory—the design of the buildings, the layout of machinery, the organization of work, and the system of management. * * * At the end of the 19th century, American industry was outgrowing its factories and management practices. The late 19th century saw factories grow from small-scale operations, often owned and man­ aged by one family, to large-scale complex manufacturing enterprises owned by corporations and run by specially hired managers. New management theories, introduced by F. W. Taylor and others, ad­ dressed the changes that came with the new scale and complexity of industry. The new management techniques sought, among other things, to reduce costs by tightening the chain of command in facto­ ries and intensifying the work process. Daniel Nelson writes that engi­ neers who took over managerial positions turned to rational manage­ ment as they realized its importance to successful business.3 The industrial organization, as well as the management and marketing techniques perfected during this period, became and remained the foundation of modern manufacturing and business administration. These changes in production scale and management altered social and labor relations as well. The corporate owners knew little or noth­ ing about the factory, its workers, and its operations; they cared pri­ marily about dividends. Similarly, the industrial managers hired by the corporation could not know the workers, or their work, the way that the owner-manager of the small factory had. As the new condi­ tions transformed industry, the professional manager had to find solutions to old problems as well as new ones that grew along with factory size and production volume; problems barely noticeable in the old...