Making a Manufacture

Over 150 years after its founding, Zenith continues to preserve the principles laid out by its founder when he set out to create a vertically-integrated manufacture.

- Jamie Tan

Integrated mass production is probably most closely associated with Henry Ford. Ford’s Model T revolutionised the automobile industry; each car spent just 93 minutes on the assembly line, and the integrated manufacturing process drove down costs to make it the first affordable car for the masses. In much the same way, watchmaking had a similar giant in Georges Favre-Jacot, who created one of the industry’s first vertically integrated manufactures – long before the concept was formally defined, much less appreciated for its advantages in costs and quality control.

Favre-Jacot’s approach was startlingly holistic, and went against the zeitgeist. At the age of 22, he began building the manufacture in Le Locle, a little city nestled in the Jura Mountains, and grew it over the years into a group of 18 buildings, all situated on a single plot of land. Together, these facilities were capable of all manufacturing activities, beginning with case production in the foundry and mills, to movement production and assembly, to specialised crafts such as dial making. This was unusual to say the least; the common practice at the time was to source for the best components one could get from external suppliers, and confine some production and assembly in-house. Favre- Jacot didn’t just internalise his production – he even built accommodations in two parts of Le Locle to cater to his employees, including a boarding house for single workers, and saw to their welfare with health insurance and even a pension fund.