The acknowledged radical among American business leaders of those days was Henry Ford. But Vail’s and Sloan’s decisions were much too “wild” for Ford. He was certain that the Model T, once it had been designed, was the right car for all time to come. Vail’s insistence on organized self-obsolescence would have struck him as lunacy. He was equally convinced that only the tightest centralized control could produce efficiency and results. Sloan’s decentralization appeared to him self-destructive weakness.
Taylorism has its place: today, with robots and software.
