Greece to roman road

After carefully examining the drawings that Andros placed on the table, Giannis thought for a long time and suddenly turned to Andros and asked: "Mr. Andros, can your car production line be used to produce aircraft?"

As the Minister of Arms of the Greek Army, his years of immersion in the development and changes of military technology have made Giannis extremely sensitive to the latest military technology.

Giannis is keenly aware of the important use of aircraft in future wars.

Although the current aircraft is limited to backward performance and backward technology, and can only perform reconnaissance and artillery calibration tasks on the battlefield, the aircraft has the characteristics of being more efficient than traditional reconnaissance and calibration methods, which impressed the officers who used it.

Aircraft have unique advantages for aerial reconnaissance and calibration.

As a new technological weapon, aircraft have made their appearance in recent wars.

In the Italian-Turkish War and the two subsequent wars in the Balkans, new weapons such as aircraft were involved.

At present, Greece does not have the ability to produce aircraft domestically.

The unexpected question made Andros unable to react for a moment. What he was originally talking about about cars suddenly involved airplanes.

Andros didn't know much about airplanes, a new type of aircraft.

Andros's eyes turned to Constantine, who just signaled with his eyes, asking him to try his best to meet the military's requirements.

"Well, in theory, the automobile production line can indeed be used to produce aircraft, Mr. Giannis, but if the automobile factory is converted to aircraft production, a lot of changes will be required," Andros explained to Giannis while thinking.

"As long as a car engine is slightly modified, it can be used as an aircraft engine. If the aircraft requires high performance, a new engine must be developed specifically for the aircraft."

This answer satisfied Giannis: It seems that what Crown Prince Constantine said about the Andros Machinery Factory is of great significance to Greece, both in terms of social benefits and military use, and it is indeed correct. .

"Mr. Andros, please produce a prototype of the truck on the drawing as soon as possible and hand it over to the army for actual testing."

"If the performance meets the military's purpose and the price is right, the order quantity required by our armaments department may reach 3,000 vehicles."

"By the way, how much does the truck you designed cost?" Giannis turned to concern about the price of the truck.

"About fifteen thousand drachmas each"

Hearing this high price, Giannis frowned, thinking that Andros Machinery Factory was currently in a financial dilemma, and did not argue with Andros about the price.

This huge order can be regarded as the price the army must pay to help the Andros Machinery Factory survive in trouble.

Giannis' words made Andros feel happy. It seemed that the military, a big customer, had really become a big customer of the machinery factory in the future.

"If the performance of your product is good enough to replace the hundreds of thousands of mules and horses currently used by the army to undertake logistics tasks, the number of orders for trucks may be even greater," Constantine interjected, encouraging Andros.

Although he was prepared in his heart, the huge number of orders from the military still surprised Andros: "So many? If the army really needs thousands of trucks, I'm afraid the production capacity of our machinery factory will be tested."

Minister Kapodistrias, who had been standing aside for a long time, suddenly said to Andros: "If the performance of the cars produced by your company can meet the needs, the government will soon limit the number of horse-drawn carriages in the city of Athens in the form of an administrative order. , advocating the use of cars as taxis and replacing horse-drawn carriages as the new urban means of transportation."

"According to my estimation, if this plan succeeds, there will be a demand for about a thousand taxis in Athens, Mr. Andros."

Andros, who was originally in trouble, was now overwhelmed by the orders that came to his door one after another, making his head dizzy.

"Very, um--, thank you very much, Your Excellency, Minister of Transportation," Andros said gratefully.

"As the second largest city in Greece, Thessaloniki also needs to use cars instead of horse-drawn carriages. As taxis, even if the number of taxis is not as good as those in Athens, it will not be much less," Constantine continued.

"According to the production capacity of your factory, I am afraid that within the next year, the supply of the two current orders will be very tight, Mr. Andros."

At present, the production capacity of the machinery factory is very weak. Due to the small market in Greece, in order for the factory to survive, the machinery factory produces a variety of products, including tractors, cars, motorcycles, and even bicycles.

In fact, in terms of sales, bicycles are currently the best-selling product of the machinery factory, with annual sales reaching tens of thousands.

Each product has a small production volume, such as tractors, with sales of more than a hundred units per year. Naturally, there is no need for machinery factories to build huge production lines, and production is completely unsystematic.

With such a weak production capacity, the machinery factory's annual production volume is very limited. Even if there is a huge demand from the Greek army in the future, Andros's machinery factory will not be able to meet it for a while.

Such a machine factory is more like a small workshop. It can produce everything, but not much of anything. It is not worth Constantine spending so much thought on getting orders from the army and asking Pooh. The Zelos government needs policy support.

Constantine spent so much energy on the machinery factory, so he was naturally dissatisfied with such a small workshop.

"Andros, have you ever thought about listing your machinery factory on the Athens Exchange to raise funds for the factory to expand production? After all, with these two orders, the biggest problem for the machinery factory is now , it is no longer sales, but your backward production capacity," Constantine said to Andri.

"As Greece ends the war and its economy recovers rapidly, the domestic private market in Greece will become bigger and bigger."

In recent years, the situation in the Balkans has been turbulent, and Greece has been facing war at all times. Against this background, the machinery factory has been struggling to survive. It has been burdened with large loans and has been unable to make a profit.

"Have you not always admired the assembly line invented by Ford Company in the United States? Why don't you try to copy the assembly line in Greece?" Constantine persuaded Andros in a seductive tone.

The invention of the assembly line was a technological change for the manufacturing industry, which greatly improved work efficiency.

The early manufacturing industry relied entirely on a large amount of manual work. This way of working required each worker to understand the complete manufacturing process of the entire finished product.

To quickly produce a finished product, you need to be very familiar with the entire process and process, which virtually increases the quality requirements for workers.

The emergence of the assembly line realized semi-automation for manual manufacturing and accelerated processing speed.

For each worker, he only needs to be familiar with one process in the entire process.

This has lowered the requirements for workers, accelerated the process of workers becoming familiar with the business, and also increased the production speed of workers.

It was Ford who introduced the assembly line into large-scale industrial production for the first time. It was such an initiative that made Ford stand out from many automobile manufacturers.

It is said that Ford got his inspiration from the slaughterhouse. What the slaughterhouse uses can be called a "disassembly line", that is, a slaughtered cow or pig is moved in front of many meat cutters, and each meat cutter only cuts a specific piece of meat. a certain part.

Ford reversed this process. The car chassis moved forward from one end to the other at a certain speed on the conveyor belt. As it moved forward, it gradually installed the engine, air conditioning system, cabin, steering wheel, instruments, lights, window glass, etc. Wheels, a complete car is assembled.

The first assembly line shortened the assembly time of each Model T car from the original 12 hours and 28 minutes to 10 seconds, increasing production efficiency by 4488 times!

This gave Ford a huge labor cost advantage. When facing other competitors, Ford seemed to be cheating. It was simply cheating!

It was this huge advantage that gave Ford the confidence to do some "extraordinary" things - he proposed an 8-hour work system, raised the hourly wage from 5 cents to 5 US dollars, and was the first to implement 5 working days a week. working days.

In the minds of fellow practitioners like Andros, Ford in the United States is simply a god-like existence.

If the machinery factory can be transformed into an assembly line, there is no doubt that production capacity will leap forward, which will have huge benefits for Greece, both in terms of national defense and economy.

This is undoubtedly what Constantine wanted to see.

Constantine's words and his suggestion to imitate his idol, Ford, and build an assembly line in his own machinery factory were so tempting that Andros's heart beat "thump-thump-thump."

"Gudu" swallowed. Although he really had the urge to agree in his heart, the reason in Andros's head still stopped this crazy move.

"Your Royal Highness, the situation in Greece and the United States are different." Andros's mind was running rapidly, thinking about the reasons to prevent him from setting up an assembly line in Greece.

"The American people are wealthy and have the income level to consume cars. Moreover, the United States has a vast territory and sparsely populated areas, so objectively there is a need for cars."

Americans are naturally relatively wealthy. Not only did they become wealthy later, in fact, the United States has been relatively wealthy since the founding of the country.

The United States has gathered a large number of German, British, and French immigrants. If the United States was not wealthy, why would the people of Britain, France, and Germany be willing to cross the ocean and come to a strange new continent to make a living?

You know, the beginning of the 20th century was Europe's heyday, and most of the world was a European colony.

Even so, a large number of British, French and German people are willing to immigrate to the United States every year, of course because the United States is relatively wealthy.

The United States did not become wealthy only after World War II, nor did it become wealthy only after it surpassed the United Kingdom in 1893 and became the world's largest industrial power. The United States was already very wealthy when it was still a colony.

In New England (the predecessor of the United States) in the 17th and 18th centuries, farmers' food, clothing, housing and transportation were already the best of their time.

The reasons are as follows: 1. The per capita cultivated land area is very large, and the land is fertile. You can buy a lot of land at a very cheap price. As long as you are not lazy, you can have a good life.

2. Religious reasons. Most of the people who went to live in North America were Puritans, who were relatively diligent and did not have cumbersome religious rituals or powerful churches to exploit the people.

3. The land in New England is fertile. At that time, the entire North American land had experienced so many years of nourishment after the Ice Age. It was quite fertile and rich in natural resources.

In summary, the most important thing is the social structure and group composition, and the large amount of social wealth generated in the later period.

It is precisely these advantages that make the United States always the richest among the major powers, with the highest GDP in terms of per capita and total GDP.

Therefore, while Americans can afford expensive transportation like cars, Greeks may not.

"In addition, the United States is the world's largest oil producer. There is sufficient oil to fuel cars, and the price of oil is low enough."

Before the advent of the internal combustion engine, the main purpose of petroleum refining was to produce kerosene for lighting. Most of the gasoline was dumped directly, so the price was naturally low enough.

Isn't it cheap to reuse garbage?

After the emergence of automobiles in the United States, oil tycoons like Rockefeller were probably most happy. Gasoline, which could only be thrown away as garbage, was transformed into a new commodity with a broader market than kerosene, and unlimited potential.

On the contrary, kerosene was originally the main economic product of petroleum refining. After the large-scale application of electric lights, the market began to shrink.

"It is precisely because of various reasons that the American automobile market is very broad."

"But Greece is different. Greece has poor resources. In a short period of time, it has participated in three wars, consuming a lot of wealth. The people's income is not high, at least not as high as that of Americans, and its territory is not large."

"These objective reasons are limiting the Greek car market."

"For Ford, the U.S. automobile market is vast enough. The biggest problem is their backward production capacity constraints, which provides a large enough stage for the assembly line."

"This is not the case in Greece. The narrow automobile market is our main problem, and low automobile production capacity is not our main contradiction."

Constantine just looked at Andros calmly and did not argue with him.

Although every reason listed by Andros prevented him from building his own assembly line, Andros knew that he was moved.

"That's nothing. The machinery factory's products include tractors, motorcycles, cars, and in the future there will be trucks, and there may be other products. Who knows?" Constantine shrugged and said nonchalantly.

"Although the single production quantity of these products is not high, the total number is still considerable."

"We just need to improve on the Ford assembly line. We can build a hybrid assembly line that can produce trucks, cars, or tractors. If our engineers are smart enough, then this hybrid assembly line can even It should be possible to produce motorcycles.”

"For example, the production of trucks or tractors can be concentrated on the production of cars for a certain period of time, and then it can be changed again to produce trucks or tractors. In short, the production can be done in turn according to the order."

"Although such a mixed assembly line may not be as efficient as Ford, which only produces Model T cars, it is still an assembly line."

"As long as the essence of the assembly line is brought into play, it will still have the high production efficiency of Ford's assembly line. At least compared to the low production speed of the current small workshops in machinery factories, it will be a huge leap forward." Constantine In order to get Andros to agree to build the assembly line, Ding used his brains and said.

Constantine's words seemed to break some kind of shackles that bound Andros's head. He widened his eyes and finally murmured: "It should be possible for a mixed assembly line to concentrate on producing a single product within a certain period of time. Bar"