Forcing the Factory of the Future: Cybernation and Societal Institutions

by Bryn Jones

This study of the pursuit of the "automatic factory" focuses on the key industry of metalworking in Britain, Italy, Japan and the United States. It unveils a recurring historical conflict between two logics of factory management and organization: workshop principles and principles of a standardized factory. Case studies of "Flexible Manufacturing Systems" in these four countries and their sociopolitical contexts show national variations and tensions between factory and workshop principles continuing into the age of computerization.

318 pages, Hardcover

First published June 26, 1997

Reviews

[Ivan · Rating 2 out of 5]

A thorough study of the automation movement in the industrialized nations, as well as workforce relations and management techniques, namely Fordist, Taylorist and flexible specialization. This will be interesting to some industrial historians, as the data, used in this book, is quite old, by the standards of the fast-moving metalworking and middle-sized manufacturing industry. The weakest point of the book, as with many specialized studies, is the fact that we live in a world with limited resources, and introduction of the automation , as well as the advanced management techniques is only sensible, when the capital investment does not exceed the available "economic base", even if the global salaries are identical everywhere. This is why, at present most of our goods are manufactured by hand in countries with low-priced workforce, and this is also why in several years we will no longer be able to profit from those low cost "manufactures/workshops" (I really cannot call those "factories"), as the price of commodities and transport will raise to the point of prohibiting such practices.