Japy Frères

Japy Frères was founded in 1806 by Frédéric and his sons Pierre, Fritz and Louis. Frédéric himself (1749 - 1812) was a pioneer in industrialization and manufacturing in general, thus Japy played an important role in the rationalisation of the clock production: pieces were always made individual, by hand. However, Japy started manufacturing pocketwatches and clocks in basic production lines, like Ford did with cars. In a short amount of time the procution had doubled. The Japy company grew even more when the production of watches and clocks for the 'common' man began. The lower price of the produced pieces resulted in many army contracts. Frédéric's interpretation of production lines became the worldwide industrial standard.