Forcing the Factory of the Future

ISBN-13: 9780521572064 / Angielski / Twarda / 1997 / 318 str.

Bryn Jones

Opis

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.

Spis treści

Part I. The Workshop Versus the Factory: 1. Introduction: explaining factory evolution; 2. Past production paradigms: the workshop, Taylorism and Fordism; 3. Productivity for prosperity: industrial renewal and Cold War politics; Part II. Technologies of Control: 4. Technological evolution and the pathology of batch production; 5. Numerical control, work organisation and societal institutions; Part III. Cybernation and flexibility: 6. The cybernated factory and the American dream; 7. An American deviant: FMS at Alpha; 8. Easy-peasy Japanesey: flexible automation in Japan; 9. Revolution from above: FMS in Britain; 10. The third Italy and technological dualism; 11. Conclusion: the struggle continues.