Make Big Jobs Small Through Equipment Vision

“Kaiser's use of equipment and his relationship with LeTourneau reflected his vision of possibilities. As LeTourneau wrote, "[Kaiser] was the first contractor I had ever met who didn't look upon my machines as trick instruments to do small jobs faster. He saw them as instruments to make big jobs small."27 LeTourneau was describing Kaiser's extraordinary skill at "job breakdown." Kaiser's ability to perceive the rhythms of labor and to organize materials enabled him to envision which jobs were fit to be split into simple, repetitive tasks or even mechanized in short, applying assembly-line principles to road construction.”

“Kaiser's perception of the possibilities afforded by job breakdown transcended industrial boundaries. Kaiser applied assembly-line principles to road building, then to dam building. Later, as a shipbuilder, Kaiser suc- Page 21 cessfully executed others' ideas of breaking up shipbuilding crafts into multiple lower-skilled jobs. In so doing, Kaiser both opened wartime production to a large segment of the nation's workforce and employed a prefabrication strategy based on assembly-line principles. Kaiser followed a similar path in auto construction and, some would argue, in health care.”