Charles E. Sorensen

Charles Emil Sorensen, nicknamed Cast-Iron Charlie, was a Danish-American production engineer and executive who spent four decades at the Ford Motor Company. Born in 1881 and brought to the United States as a small child, he trained as a patternmaker and foundryman, met Henry Ford in Detroit and joined the firm in 1905. He rose to head the pattern department and later managed production planning and development as Ford moved its assembly to Highland Park and then the River Rouge plant, working without a formal job title in the manner of Ford's management. Sorensen is credited, with others such as Walter Flanders, Clarence Avery and Ed Martin, with developing the first automotive assembly line, in which the chassis moves past stations of specialized workers. He also pushed foundry practice toward mass production, using metal rather than wooden patterns, and was responsible for production techniques that made a V-8 engine block from a single casting. In the early 1940s he led the design of the Willow Run plant that built B-24 Liberator bombers. He retired from Ford in 1944, became president of Willys-Overland, and died in 1968.