HBR Staff using AI
When electricity first arrived in factories, managers didn’t redesign their buildings. They simply replaced the central steam engine with an electric motor and kept the system of belts, pulleys, and shafts that distributed power throughout the facility. The result was marginal improvement at best. It took decades for manufacturers to realize that electricity’s true potential required tearing down the old multi-story factories (built tall to accommodate gravity-fed power distribution) and building single-story plants where machines could be placed wherever the work demanded.
