Forcing The Factory Of The Future

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.

The International Conference on Production Research has a good tradition: The fIrst Conference was held in Birmingham 1971 with 61 participants. With respect to the decision that the Conference should be held every second year, by this time the Conference has been held in the following countries: Birmingham (1971, UK), Copenhagen (1973, Denmark), Amhurst (1975, USA), Tokyo (1977, Japan), Amsterdam (1979, The Netherlands), Novi Sad (1981, Yugoslavia), Windsor (1983, Canada), Stuttgart (1985, Germany), and the next Conference will take place in Cincinnatti (1987, USA). The number of submitted abstracts and papers was continuously increas ing such that the Programme Committee of this actual 8th Conference on Production Research has been forced to introduce a further refereeing procedure. Each submitted abstract was presented to at least two referees. This resulted not only in a reduction of the number of presented full papers and poster contributions but, as the Programme Committee and the Editiors hope, it led also to a considerable increase in the scientifIc quality of this 8th International Conference on Production Research. The preceeding conference in Windsor, Canada, was dedicated to the topic: Production Research as a Means of Productivity Improvement. We don't believe that this statement has become untrue in the meanwhile.

Why the United States lags behind other industrialized countries in sharing the benefits of innovation with workers and how we can remedy the problem. The United States has too many low-quality, low-wage jobs. Every country has its share, but those in the United States are especially poorly paid and often without benefits. Meanwhile, overall productivity increases steadily and new technology has transformed large parts of the economy, enhancing the skills and paychecks of higher paid knowledge workers. What’s wrong with this picture? Why have so many workers benefited so little from decades of growth? The Work of the Future shows that technology is neither the problem nor the solution. We can build better jobs if we create institutions that leverage technological innovation and also support workers though long cycles of technological transformation. Building on findings from the multiyear MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future, the book argues that we must foster institutional innovations that complement technological change. Skills programs that emphasize work-based and hybrid learning (in person and online), for example, empower workers to become and remain productive in a continuously evolving workplace. Industries fueled by new technology that augments workers can supply good jobs, and federal investment in R&D can help make these industries worker-friendly. We must act to ensure that the labor market of the future offers benefits, opportunity, and a measure of economic security to all.

Productivity enhancement is a major concern for all manufacturing enterprises. Productivity enhancement can be achieved in many ways and many facets of its problems have been investigated over the last decades. A number of methods, tools and technologies have emerged to efficiently increase productivity and rationalize management of manufacturing enterprises. International experts from both academia and industry share their experiences in this collection of articles, contributing to the latest advances in the many facets of productivity enhancement in manufacturing enterprises. Themes and visions are detailed on factories of the future, new management approaches, manufacturing system integration and manufacturing information systems. These technical areas can be grouped into four major sections: Factories of the future; Techniques and tools for automated manufacturing; Robotics; and Industrial applications. The papers illustrate a pattern of valuable and interesting approaches to the fascinating problem of designing a new generation of robots with high enough performance capabilities to be used in an industrial context.

Focusing on the design and implementation of computer-based automatic machine tools, David F. Noble challenges the idea that technology has a life of its own. Technology has been both a convenient scapegoat and a universal solution, serving to disarm critics, divert attention, depoliticize debate, and dismiss discussion of the fundamental antagonisms and inequalities that continue to beset America. This provocative study of the postwar automation of the American metal-working industry—the heart of a modern industrial economy—explains how dominant institutions like the great corporations, the universities, and the military, along with the ideology of modern engineering shape, the development of technology. Noble shows how the system of "numerical control," perfected at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and put into general industrial use, was chosen over competing systems for reasons other than the technical and economic superiority typically advanced by its promoters. Numerical control took shape at an MIT laboratory rather than in a manufacturing setting, and a market for the new technology was created, not by cost-minded producers, but instead by the U. S. Air Force. Competing methods, equally promising, were rejected because they left control of production in the hands of skilled workers, rather than in those of management or programmers. Noble demonstrates that engineering design is influenced by political, economic, managerial, and sociological considerations, while the deployment of equipment—illustrated by a detailed case history of a large General Electric plant in Massachusetts—can become entangled with such matters as labor classification, shop organization, managerial responsibility, and patterns of authority. In its examination of technology as a human, social process, Forces of Production is a path-breaking contribution to the understanding of this phenomenon in American society.

For centuries, industrialization and factory-based production have been core ingredients in economic growth, development, and innovation. This symbiotic relationship between industrialization and economic prosperity is now changing. 'Megatrends' - trends within the domains of technology, economy, society, and ecology that have a global impact - are changing the ability of the manufacturing sector to serve as the engine of growth, changing traditional ideas of technological progress, and changing growth and development opportunities in both the global South and the global North. Four megatrends are particularly worthy of note: the rise of services, digital automation technologies, globalization of production, and ecological breakdown. In this book, Jostein Hauge provides a novel analysis of how these megatrends are changing industrialization, and charts new pathways for industrial policy and global governance. He also offers a wide-ranging account of the role of technology, globalization, and ecology in shaping the world economy. The Future of the Factory shows that industrialization remains a cornerstone of economic prosperity, but that power asymmetries in the world economy create uneven opportunities for achieving economic growth, development, and industrialization.