Forcing the Factory of the Future: Cybernation and Societal Institutions

by Bryn Jones

Is computerised production transforming work roles, as recent debates about flexible specialisation and post-Fordist manufacturing suggest? This book focuses on the key case of metalworking batch production in Britain, Italy, Japan and the USA. Looking at technological, political and social developments from a comparative perspective, it suggests that comprehensive factory principles never fully replaced workshop organisation. Drawing on empirical case studies of flexible manufacturing systems, Bryn Jones offers a new distinction between the bureaucratic bias of Taylorism and the product standardisation approach of Fordism, and questions whether computerised production is transcending Fordism. Instead of the often predicted models of deskilled, centrally controlled work, or a decentralised craft renaissance, he shows a greater likelihood of national variations between factory and workshop principles continuing into the contemporary age of computerisation.

318 pages, Kindle Edition

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.