"Fordism"

"Fordism" takes its name from Henry Ford, the American car manufacturer at the turn of the 20^th century. The concept itself describes a particular form of economic process based on the idea of a production line - a way of producing cars that broke the overall production process down into hundreds (sometimes thousands) of small, individualised, highly-specialised, parts. By introducing a complex division of labour, Ford reasoned (correctly) that costs could be lowered and profits increased.

A key element of "Fordism", therefore, was the rationalisation of the production process - something that was made possible by the application of machinery (and hence very much a characteristic of the modern period).