Originally Posted by MS Fowler

Thanks for posting that video. I had not seen that.
It somewhat overstates the case. Yes, when it was running Willow run produced a plane every 55 minutes. But there were a lot of teething problems, including Consolidated not wanting to share blue prints!
The big advance by Ford was the design, and building of a single jig that aligned the fuselage with the inner wing sections. Consolidated did this mating outside where the sun warped the components while they were trying to align them. Ford's method changed what had been a 36 man, 1500 man hour job of skilled men with transits, and making delicate adjustments, to a simple job, done by assembly line workers--3 men in 26 minutes!