Forcing the Factory of the Future

Book excerpt: 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.