Main entry:

Biggs, Lindy.

Title & Author:

The rational factory : architecture, technology, and work in America's age of mass production / Lindy Biggs.

Publication:

Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, ©1996.

Description:

xiii, 202 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Series:

Studies in industry and society ; 11

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 171-192) and index.
Rationalizing production in nineteenth-century America -- Industrial engineers and their "master machine" -- The human machine : engineers and factory welfare work -- Modernizing factories in the early twentieth century -- The Crystal Palace : the Ford Motor Company's Highland Park Plant, 1910-1914 -- The rational factory : Highland Park's new shop, 1914-1919 -- Ford's most ambitious machine : the River Rouge Plant, 1919-1935.
Also issued online.

Summary:

In their quest for a "rational" workplace, turn-of-the-century engineers and industrial architects recast the factory itself in the image of the machine. Indeed, they considered the factory building the "master machine," containing and coordinating all of the machinery within. Such rational factory planning improved production speed and the management of workers. Once created, the rational factory transformed the nature of work, both human and mechanical. In The Rational Factory, Lindy Biggs contends that factory design played a crucial role in the development of American mass production. Her interdisciplinary study draws from the fields of business history, engineering, technology, architecture, and theories of modernity. Why did some people want to rationalize the factory, she asks, and how did the system impact those who worked under it

Resources:
Table of contents
Contributor biographical information
Publisher description

ISBN:

0801852617 (hc ; alk. paper)
9780801852619 (hc ; alk. paper)
9780801872457
0801872456

Subject:

Plant layout.
Mass production United States.
Production engineering.
Industrial efficiency United States.
Implantation (Organisation)
Production de masse États-Unis.
Technique de la production.
Efficience dans l'industrie États-Unis.
Industrial efficiency
Mass production
Massenfertigung
Industriebau
Fabrieksgebouwen.
Massaproductie.
United States
USA

Form/genre:

Hochschulschrift.

Added entries:

Studies in industry and society ; 11.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 110543
Call No.: ID TS178.B54; ID:96-B1741
Status: Available